IRLF 


m 


THREEWEEKS 
POLITICS 

JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 


H  -  -.  m 

HARPERS 

•K  BLACK  &WHITE 

SERIES 


GIFT  OF 
A.    P.   Morrison 


IMAGINED    HIMSELF   FAMOUS 


THREE  WEEKS  IN  POLITICS 


BY 

JOHN  KENDRICK  BANGS 
AUTHOR  OF   "COFFEE  AND  REPARTEE" 

ILLUSTRATED 


NEW   YORK 

HARPER   AND   BROTHERS 
1894 


UIFT  OF 
f.     "I 


Harper's  *  <  fclaik  aW*  White  "'Series. 

Illustrated.    *32mo'  Cloth*  50  cents*  each. 

THREE  ^V^^l^^t 

jwjbf,  1^  ****pL 

John^encfric'k  Bangs.* 

A  Comedy.     By  Brander  Mat 

THE  GARROTERS.     Farce.     By 

thews. 

W.  D.  Howells. 

PHILLIPS    BROOKS.       By    Rev. 

FIVE    O'CLOCK    TEA.      Farce. 

Arthur  Brooks,  D.D. 

By  W.  D.  Howells. 

GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS.     By 

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W.  D.  Howells. 

THE   UNEXPECTED    GUESTS.     A 

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Farce.       By     William     Dean 

W.  D.  Howells. 

Howells. 

THIS   PICTURE   AND  THAT.     A 

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IN    AFRICA.      By    Henry    M. 

thews. 

Stanley. 

TRAVELS  IN  AMERICA  100YKARS 

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AGO.     By  Thomas  Twining. 

Coppee. 

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WHITTIER:  NOTES  OF  HIS  LIFE 

William  Dean  Howells. 

AND  OF  HIS  FRIENDSHIPS.    By 

EVENING  DRESS.    A  Farce.    By 

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William  Dean  Howells. 

THE    JAPANESE    BRIDE.       By 

THE    WORK    OF    WASHINGTON 

Naomi  Tamura. 

IRVING.     By  Charles  Dudley 

GILES    COREY,    YEOMAN.      By 

Warner. 

Mary  E.  Wilkins. 

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PUBLISHED  BY  HARPER  &  BROTHERS,  NEW  YORK. 

For  sale  by  all  booksellers,  or  -will  be  sent  by  the  publishers, 

postage  prepaid,  on  receipt  of  price. 

Copyright,  1894,  by  HARPER  &  BROTHERS. 
All  rights  reserved. 


TO 

FRANCIS   P.  TREANOR 
"A  FRIEND  IN  NEED" 


M92334 


CONTENTS 


I.— INTRODUCTION i 

II.— GENERAL  COMMITTEES  AND  OTHER  THINGS  16 

III.— OLD  JIM  THE  GARDENER  AND  OTHERS.  .  31 

IV.— SPEECHES  SPOKEN  AND  UNSPOKEN  ...  44 

V. — THE  SILVER  LINING 57 

VI. — CONCLUSION 72 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


PAGE 

IMAGINED  HIMSELF  FAMOUS  ....  Frontispiece 

WANTED  A  DIME facing  page    10 

OLD  JIM  THE  SECOND 36 

A  STATUESQUE  POSE 44 

SEE? "            70 

RUNNING  FOR  THE  9.05 82 


THREE  WEEKS  fo  'POLITICS' 


J  j  J    -<         o    j  j  j    »     j  j       o     a    J      -> 

INTRODUCTION 

'HP  HE  Idiot  had  been  away  from  Mrs. 
Smithers-Pedagog's  charming  home 
for  single  gentlemen  for  nearly  a  month, 
and  it  must  be  admitted  that  even  the 
school-master,  with  whom  he  was  rarely 
known  to  agree,  missed  him. 

"  I  never  regarded  that  fellow  as  a  lux 
ury,"  Mr.  Pedagog  remarked,  after  an  un 
usually  peaceful  series  of  breakfasts,  "  nor 
have  I  ever  deemed  him  a  necessity ;  but 
I  will  say  candidly  that  I  now  think  him 
a  little  of  both." 

"  I'm  disposed  to  agree  with  you,"  said 
the  Bibliomaniac.  "  Breakfast  hasn't 
seemed  half  as  exciting  without  him  as  it 


is  with  him,  and  I  for  one  heartily  wish 
him  back." 

"  Humph !"  ejaculated  the  Doctor. 
"  Every  man  to  his  taste.  I  once  had  a 
patieqt  who  looked  back  upon  the  mumps 
Wfc£  pleas\ife;a^{i  I  hjave  known  persons 
wno  enjoyed  the  measles;  but  as  for  the 
*  ^,'mis^jHim  Jnp't  ab.all,  and  if  he 
's ;bfcpk  hje'jl,$|i$  ci^y  welcome  served 
cold  with  sauce  piquante." 

"  You  mustn't  be  too  severe  with  him," 
said  Mr.  Pedagog.  "  He  is  queer,  no 
doubt,  but  I'm  fond  of  him.  I  don't  think 
he  has  much  badness  in  his  make-up." 

"No,"  said  the  Doctor.  "No — I  don't 
think  the  Idiot  would  kill  a  man  or  rob 
a  jewelry  store." 

"Where  is  he,  anyhow?"  asked  Mr. 
Whitechoker.  "  Gone  home  to  see  his 
father?" 

"  Not  this  time,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog. 
"  He  has  a  friend  who  is  running  for 
Mayor  somewhere  up  the  river,  and  he's 
gone  up  to  help  his  friend  out.  If  his 
friend  gets  elected,  the  Idiot  says  he's 
to  be  appointed  Receiver  of  Taxes  and 
Prime-Minister." 


"  Hoh  !"  laughed  the  Doctor.  "  Hoh  ! 
The  Idiot!  Prime  -  Minister  !  I'd  like 
to  live  in  that  town  for  five  minutes  if  he 
gets  it.  A  three-ringed  circus  would  be 
tame  alongside  of  it.  Where  is  this  fa 
vored  burg?" 

"  I  think  it's  called  Phillipseburg  by 
plain  people,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog;  "though 
Phillipseburg-  on  -  the  -  Dunwoodie  is  the 
way  it  is  designated  by  polite  society 
there  —  at  least,  that  is  what  the  Idiot 
says.  His  friend  Perkins— 

"Thaddeus  Perkins,  the  writer?''  in 
terrupted  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  Yes,  he's  the  man,"  said  Mrs.  Peda 
gog.  "Thaddeus  Perkins  has  been  nomi 
nated  by  the  Democrats,  and  the  Idiot 
is  very  anxious  to  have  him  defeated, 
so  he  has  gone  to  Phillipseburg  to  see 
what  his  chances  of  success  are  and  to 
destroy  them  if  possible — or  so  he  says. 
I  fancy  that  deep  down  in  his,  heart  the 
Idiot  wants  him  elected." 

"Well,  if  any  man  can  defeat  him,  the  Id 
iot  is  the  man  to  do  it.  If  Perkins  will  only 
take  the  Idiot's  advice,  the  cares  of  office 
will  never  oppress  him,"  said  the  Doctor. 


"  By  Jove !"  cried  the  Bibliomaniac, 
glancing  over  the  morning  paper,  "he  has 
done  it.  The  election  came  off  yesterday." 

"And  Perkins  is  defeated?"  said  the 
Doctor. 

"Yes!"  the  Bibliomaniac  replied. 
"  Here's  what  it  says :  '  Poetry  Snowed 
Under  in  Phillipseburg  !  Coal  on  Top. 
Perkins  Spared  to  Literature  by  an  Over 
whelming  Majority.  The  Administration 
Rebitked.'  " 

"  What  nonsense !"  said  Mr.  White- 
choker.  "  What  have  coal  and  poetry 
to  do  with  it?" 

"  Everything,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 
"  Perkins  is  a  poet,  and  the  rival  candi 
date  was  a  coal-dealer." 

"  I  fancy  the  people  realized  that  coal 
burns  better  than  poetry,"  suggested  Mr. 
Pedagog. 

The  Poet  sighed. 

"  If  they  do,  it  shows  how  little  they 
know  about  poetry,"  he  said,  with  a  sad 
smile. 

And  then,  even  as  the  Poet  spoke,  the 
door  opened,  and  the  long-lost  Idiot  ap 
peared.  He  looked  jaded. 


"  Hullo  !"  he  said,  with  a  smile  of  greet 
ing,  as  he  entered  the  room.  "  I'm  back." 

"I  judged  so,"  said  the  Doctor,  coldly. 
"  A  man  who  appears  on  the  scene  after 
a  long  absence  generally  is  back." 

"A  lucid  diagnosis,"  said  the  Idiot, 
drawing  up  a  chair,  after  shaking  hands 
with  Mrs.  Pedagog.  "  And  how  have  you 
all  been?" 

"  Disconsolate,"  said  the  Poet.  "  We 
have  missed  you." 

"Glad  to  hear  it,"  said  the  Idiot.  "I 
can't  return  the  compliment,  however. 
I  haven't  had  time  to  miss  anybody,  not 
even  you.  I  wish  I  had,  because  then  I 
might  have  missed  several  persons  I've 
sincerely  wished  to  miss.  I've  simply 
been  overrun  for  the  past  three  weeks 
with  people  who  would  do  their  country 
a  great  service  if  they'd  disappear  and 
never  come  back." 

"  I  see  by  the  paper,"  said  the  Biblio 
maniac,  "  that  you  failed  to  land  your 
man." 

"  That's  erroneous,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"  We  did  land  our  man  high  and  dry. 
He  struggled  hard  to  prevent  our  saving 


him,  but  with  the  aid  of  the  good  people 
of  Phillipseburg  we  got  him  out  of  a  very 
tight  place.  He'd  have  been  elected  if  it 
hadn't  been  for  me  and  the  voters,  and  for 
two  years  to  come  he'd  have  had  more 
trouble  than  he  ever  dreamed  of.  That's 
the  trouble  with  poets ;  they  don't  look 
ahead.  They  can't.  They've  been  taught 
to  look  within — to  spend  their  lives  in 
self-contemplation,  and  then  to  startle 
the  world  with  accounts  of  what  they  see 
there.  That's  why  poets  so  often  suffer 
from  what  the  vulgar  call  the  big-head. 
Perkins  can  see  from  one  end  of  a  poem 
to  another,  but  he  can't  open  history  and 
see  through  it  as  clearly  as  some  others 
can.  Before  he  took  this  nomination 
I  said  to  him, '  My  dear  boy,  let  others 
make  history ;  content  yourself  with 
writing  it.'  But  Perkins  didn't  see  it  in 
that  light.  He  had  a  tax-bill  in  his  pocket 
that  he  couldn't  pay,  and  he  was  mad. 
I  believe  he  would  have  run  for  Game 
Constable  if  they'd  asked  him,  just  for  the 
sake  of  trying  to  reform  the  country.  He 
was  after  power,  and  he  came  near  get 
ting  it.  He  lost  only  three  wards  out  of 


five,  and  I  verily  believe  that  a  dozen 
kegs  of  beer  and  a  little  self-denial  in  the 
matter  of  wearing  a  new  silk  hat  and  pat 
ent-leather  shoes  everywhere  he  went 
would  have  changed  the  result." 

"  What  earthly  influence  could  silk  hats 
and  patent-leather  shoes  have  on  the  re 
sult?"  queried  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  I  don't  know,"  said  the  Idiot ;  "  but  I 
do  know  that  two  of  the  most  astute  pol 
iticians  in  the  place  begged  him  for  hours 
to  wear  a  brown  slouched  hat  he  had  left 
over  from  two  seasons  ago  when  he  went 
campaigning ;  and  when  Thaddeus  at 
tended  a  mass-meeting  in  full  evening 
dress  the  chairman  of  the  General  Com 
mittee  threatened  to  resign  unless  Per 
kins  went  home  and  put  on  a  sack-coat. 
'  Cut-aways  is  bad  enough,'  he  said, '  but 
claw-hammers  is  ruin.  Who  proposed 
this  man,  anyway  ?'  " 

"  And  wouldn't  he  give  in  ?"  asked  the 
Doctor. 

"  He  might  have,  if  it  hadn't  been  for 
me,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  But  I  told  him  to 
stick  to  his  clothes.  As  I  said  to  him, 
they  ought  to  have  found  out  what  kind 


of  clothes  he  wore  before  he  was  nomi 
nated.  He  agreed  to  that  fully,  but  he 
had  a  strong  reason  for  wavering.  '  J 
don't  want  to  lose  this  fight  and  have 
the  Administration  rebuked  simply  be 
cause  I  like  to  be  well  dressed,'  he  said.  '  L 
I  can  save  the  party  by  wearing  overalls 
and  three- dollar  shoes,  I'm  willing  tc 
make  the  sacrifice.' ' 

"  He  certainly  was  a  tractable  candi 
date,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  He  was,  in  the  beginning,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  But  as  the  campaign  proceeded 
he  acquired  a  nerve  which  in  office  would 
be  fine,  but  which,  in  a  contest  for  office, 
is  the  last  thing  a  man  ought  to  have.  If 
you've  ever  any  of  you  been  in  politics, 
you've  probably  noticed  that  if  a  candi 
date  is  to  come  out  like  a  lion,  he's  got 
to  go  in  like  a  lamb,  and  retain  his  lamb 
like  qualities  until  the  votes  are  counted. 
After  the  votes  are  counted  he  can  be 
any  animal  he  pleases.  Barring  my  ef 
forts,  the  thing  that  defeated  Thaddeus 
was  that  he  was  a  lamb  the  first  week,  a 
bear  the  second,  and  a  perfect  hyena  the 
third.  Why,  just  after  his  nomination 


he  was  as  genial  as  could  be — he  had 
every  element  of  popularity.  Anybody 
could  stop  him  in  the  street  and  ask  him 
for  the  City  Treasurership  or  a  dime,  and 
Thaddeus  would  put  him  off  so  polite 
ly  that  the  man  who  wanted  to  be  City 
Treasurer  felt  certain  that  he  was  going 
to  get  the  place,  and  the  fellow  who  asked 
for  the  dime  would  have  given  Thaddeus 
a  dollar  for  the  campaign  fund  if  he'd 
been  asked  for  it  and  had  it  to  give.  The 
second  week  he  seemed  to  be  cultivating 
a  reserve  which  was  encouraging  to  his 
friends  who  didn't  want  him  elected.  He 
could  have  worn  overalls  and  brogans 
that  second  week  without  helping  his 
cause  a  bit.  He  had  a  full-dress  manner 
about  him  which  all  the  overalls  and  bro 
gans  in  the  world  could  not  have  coun 
teracted.  Candidates,  politicians,  voters 
calling  upon  him  were  received,  and  no 
more.  He  didn't  try  to  hit  anybody,  but 
it  was  evident  that  he  was  yearning  for 
the  independence  of  the  poet,  and  for 
people  calling  on  campaign  business  his 
house  took  on  many  of  the  qualities  of  a 
first-class  refrigerator. 


"  '  For  Heaven's  sake,  take  him  to  Lake- 
wood,  if  you  can,'  said  his  campaign  man 
ager.  '  What  do  you  suppose  he  did  yes 
terday  ?' 

"*  I  give  it  up,'  said  I.     'What?' 

" '  He  told  a  delegation  from  the  Ivy 
Club  that  if  there  was  a  certificate  of  elec 
tion  in  every  keg  of  beer  in  Christendom, 
he  wouldn't  buy  one  if  they  cost  a  cent  a 
million,  and  to-night  the  Ivy  Club's  out 
in  the  papers  for  the  other  man.  Get 
him  away.  We'll  hire  an  actor  to  come 
up  here  to  play  his  part,  and  /'//  write 
the  lines.  Sixty -two  votes  gone  at  a 
clip!'" 

"  Is  it  really  true  that  people  ask  candi 
dates  for  beer  ?"  asked  Mr.  Whitechoker. 
"  I  have  heard  that  it  is  done,  but  I  never 
believed  it." 

"They  do  that  immoral  thing  some 
times,"  said  the  Idiot.  "And  they  get 
it,  too.  Why,  one  night  last  week  Per 
kins  and  I  were  playing  bezique  in  the 
library,  while  the  maid  was  staving  off 
delegations  out  in  the  hall,  telling  them 
that  the  candidate  was  out  in  the  Fourth 
Ward,  addressing  the  Taxpayers'  Griev- 


WANTED   A 


(  IOC  «    <  C(      •   C    O       « 

/A  I!/:  V:0  •':  :    :  <'<V  <' 

e         c    e     c      <    <      <        <  «      t    «  t  c    t 


ance  Association,  when,  ting- a -ling- a  - 
ling,  the  telephone  began  to  ring.  I  won't 
say  what  Thaddeus  said.  It  was  near  the 
end  of  his  hyena-week,  and  he  had  a  dis 
position  like  a  man  who  has  been  flayed 
alive.  The  intent  of  his  remark,  how 
ever,  was  that  he'd  have  that  telephone 
pulled  out  by  the  roots  if  it  tung-a-lung 
once  more.  After  calming  him  down  I 
went  to  the  'phone,  and  this  is  what  oc 
curred  : 

"  '  H'lo  !'  said  the  man  at  the  other  end. 

"  '  Well  ?'  said  I. 

'"Who  is  this?' 

-'Me!' 

"  «  Who  the  blank  is  me  ?' 

"  '  Who  are  you  ?' 

"  '  Well,  I'm  MacNamara,  see  ?  All  I've 
gottersay  is,  is  this  Perkinses?' 

"'It  is.' 

"'Is  he  home?' 

"'No.' 

" '  Then  he  might  as  well  get  off  from 
the  ticket.  I'm  down  on  Parker  Place, 
and  the  whole  street's  flooded  with 
Burns's  beer.  For  the  sake  of  Tariff 
Reform,  send  a  keg  down  to  the  Parker 


Place  Independent  Club  before  nine. 
I've  been  standin'  these  fellers  off  for 
two  and  a  half  weeks  now,  and  the  boys 
are  gettin'  blanked  dry/ 

"  '  We  haven't  any  money  for  beer.' 

" '  Then,  for  the  love  of  the  party,  ring 
up  your  neighbors  and  borrow  some  —  I 
tell  you  the  thing  can't  be  done  without 
oiling  up  the  machine.  Perkins  hadn't 
oughter  gone  into  this  'fe  wasn't  willin' 
to  set  'em  up.' 

"  '  But  his  principles — ' 

'"Blank  principles.  I'm  talkin'  kegs, 
not  principles.  Do  we  get  the  kegs  or  not  ?' 

"  '  Nary  a  keg/ 

"'Aw,  say  —  why,  I'm  standin'  knee- 
deep  in  the  other  man's  beer  now/ 

"  '  Then,  what  are  you  growling  about  ? 
Why  don't  you  kneel  down  and  quench 
your  thirst  ?' 

"  '  We  want  your  beer  !  We  don't  like 
drinkin'  with  the  enemy/ 

"  '  Well,  I've  told  you  we  haven't  any/ 

"'Ah-h-h!  You're  fine  demmycrats, 
ain't  yer !  Diss  is  what  comes  o'  puttin' 
up  a  Mugwump.  Dere  ain't  no  life  in  de 
Mugs !' 


« 3 


"  '  No,'  I  replied,  seeing  an  opportunity 
to  lose  a  few  more  votes.  '  No.  What 
you  fellows  want  is  a  Jugwump.  If  it 
isn't  too  late,  you'd  better  nominate  an 
Independent  candidate  who'll  stand  up 
for  Keg  and  Country  !' 

"  Whereupon  MacNamara  consigned 
Perkins  and  me  to  everlasting  torment, 
hung  up  the  telephone-receiver,  and  I  pre 
sume  went  swimming  in  the  beer  of  the 
enemy ;  at  any  rate,  two  days  later  he 
and  his  followers  sobered  up  sufficiently 
to  pass  resolutions  stating  that  while  the 
Parker  Place  Independent  Club  was  still 
true  to  Democratic  ideas,  they  thought 
that  in  local  matters  national  politics 
should  be  lost  sight  of,  and  that  on  gen 
eral  principles  a  man  who  sold  coal  in 
Phillipseburg  was  likely  to  make  a  better 
Mayor  than  a  man  who  went  to  New 
York  to  peddle  poetry." 

"  I  must  confess,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog, 
"  that  I  think  their  conclusions  were 
sound,  whatever  may  have  been  their 
premises." 

"  I  agree  with  you,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  That  is  why  I  wanted  Thaddeus  de- 


'4 


feated.  A  Mayor  needs  a  certain  bluff 
quality  in  his  make-up  which  Thaddeus 
hasn't  got.  His  messages  need  to  have 
all  the  bluff  characteristics  of  a  coal-bill 
and  none  of  that  indirection  which  poets 
get  so  in  the  habit  of  using.  If  streets 
could  be  opened  with  sonnets,  or  Alder 
men  quelled  with  quatrains,  Thaddeus 
would  have  been  a  Wellington  among 
Mayors." 

"A  Whittington  you  mean,  do  you 
not?"  suggested  the  Bibliomaniac,  super 
ciliously. 

"I  do  not,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I  mean 
Wellington.  I  was  going  to  say  Napo 
leon,  but  Napoleon  met  his  Wellington, 
which  Perkins  never  would  have  done  if, 
as  I  have  said,  a  town  could  be  governed 
by  rondeaux,  which  it  can't,  particularly 
a  town  like  Phillipseburg,  where  few  of 
the  inhabitants  know  an  anapaestic  meas 
ure  from  a  bushel  basket,  and  where 
you  could  get  a  leading  citizen  to  sign 
a  petition  requiring  the  substitution 
of  hexameters  for  water  -  meters  in 
all  private  dwellings  writh  your  eyes 
shut," 


"This  Phillipseburg  must  be  a  queer 
spot,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  It  is,"  said  the  Idiot,  as  he  left  the 
table.  "  In  which  respect  it  resembles 
every  other  spot  in  the  universe." 


II 


GENERAL    COMMITTEES   AND   OTHER 
THINGS 

THE  next  morning,  when  Mrs.  Peda- 
gog's  guests  took  their  accustomed 
places  at  the  breakfast-table,  Mr.  Ped- 
agog  was  smiling  broadly  over  some 
thing  in  the  morning  paper. 

"  Your  friend  Perkins  is  getting  it  from 
his  brothers  in  poetry  to-day,"  he  said  to 
the  Idiot. 

"No  doubt,"  observed  the  Idiot. 
"That's  a  queer  thing  about  poets. 
There's  nothing  they  like  better  than  a 
chance  to  write  each  other  up.  That's  the 
only  way  they  can  ever  get  away  from 
themselves.  They  grow  weary  of  writing 
up  their  own  emotions  at  times,  and  then 
they  dally  with  the  emotions  of  their  fel 
lows.  What's  the  poem  about  ?" 

"  It's  a  nursery  rhyme,"  said  Mr.  Ped- 


agog.     "  It   is  called  '  Mother  Goose   in 
Phillipseburg,'  and  reads  as  follows  : 

"  '  A  poet  once  in  our  town 

He  was  so  wondrous  wise, 
He  jumped  deep  into  politics, 
But  failed  to  win  the  prize. 

"  'And  when  he  saw  the  prize  was  gone, 

With  all  his  might  and  main, 
He  gathered  up  his  strength  and  sprang 
To  poetry  again. 

* '  '  And  when  he  made  his  statement  up 

To  show  what  he  had  spent, 
It  broke  that  poet's  soul  to  note 
Its  terrible  extent. 

"  '  For  sixty  miles  of  solid  verse, 

Writ  with  his  usual  skill, 
He  found  'twould  take  to  bring  him  out 
Just  even  with  his  bill.' ' 

"  That's  good,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I 
know  the  man  who  wrote  that,  and  he's  a 
first-rate  fellow — bright  as  a  button.  He 
wrote  several  of  the  interviews  with  Per 
kins  that  appeared  in  that  journal.  He 


1 8 


spent  a  funny  day  at  Perkins's  house  with 
him,  getting  points ;  not  from  Perkins, 
but  from  the  house.  Perkins  wouldn't 
talk  about  the  contest  because  there  was 
nothing  to  say.  If  he  had  been  a  dema 
gogue  he  could  have  found  plenty  of 
things  to  talk  about,  but  unfortunately  he 
wasn't,  so  the  poor  reporter  had  to  con 
tent  himself  with  getting  enough  local 
color  from  the  house  to  make  his  imag 
inative  interview  appear  truthful." 

"  I  think  the  candidate  made  a  mistake 
in  receiving  the  man  at  all,"  said  Mr. 
Pedagog. 

"  No — that  wasn't  his  mistake,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  His  error  lay  in  his  confidence 
that  men  he  had  known  for  many  years, 
with  some  of  whom  he  had  been  profes 
sionally  associated,  would  see  that  he  had 
fair  play.  However,  that's  a  mere  detail, 
after  all.  To  come  back  to  the  individual 
poet  who  has  written  him  up ;  as  I  have 
said,  Perkins  received  him  in  his  home ; 
he  smoked  Perkins's  cigars;  drank  his 
wine;  ate  two  meals  with  him  and  his 
family,  and  in  all  probability  wrote  the 
poem  with  Perkins's  pen  on  Perkins's 


table  with  Perkins's  ink.  It  takes  a  very 
clever  man  in  these  days  to  do  that  sort 
of  work.  It  isn't  as  easy  as  you  may  think. 
In  the  first  place,  consider  the  man's  feel 
ings  all  through  those  eight  hours  that 
he  spent  in  Perkins's  home,  receiving 
the  attention  always  accorded  by  gen 
tlemen  to  gentlemen.  They  must  have 
subjected  his  nervous  system  to  a  terri 
ble  strain.  The  knowledge  that  he  was 
received  in  the  house  on  one  footing, 
with  the  consciousness  that  he  had  come 
there  for  the  sole  purpose  of  making  his 
host  ridiculous  if  he  could,  must  really 
entitle  him  to  our  sympathy ;  and  he 
passed  through  the  ordeal  well.  He  car 
ried  it  off  splendidly.  You  never  would 
have  supposed  that  he  was  suffering ; 
and  when  he  went  away  to  write  Per 
kins  down  an  ass,  he  squeezed  his  hand 
just  as  a  friend  might  have  done,  and 
in  all  sincerity  that  squeeze  came  really 
from  his  heart.  He  was  sorrier  for  him 
self  than  he  was  for  Perkins." 

"  He  couldn't  have  been  much  of  a  gen 
tleman,"  said  Mrs.  Pedagog. 

"  Oh  yes,  he  was,"  rejoined  the  Idiot ; 


20 


"  that  is,  he  was  a  gentleman  personally. 
Professionally,  however,  he  was  no  more 
of  one  than  is  a  soldier  in  an  army  who 
has  to  do  something  against  his  wishes 
and  in  violation  of  his  instincts  in  obe 
dience  to  the  commands  of  his  superior 
officer.  The  reporter  is  simply  a  part  of 
a  machine.  He  goes  where  he  is  sent, 
and  does  what  he  is  sent  to  do,  no  matter 
how  abhorrent  the  commission  may  be  to 
him.  It  is  the  fault  of  the  system,  not  of 
the  man — or  so  Thaddeus  put  it.  The 
fact  is  that  the  reporters  bear  the  odium 
which  should  fall  upon  the  editors.  The 
same  man  who  condemns  the  reporter  for 
indecency  would  receive  the  editor  with 
open  arms,  forgetting  that  the  reporter  is 
doing,  through  necessity,  what  the  edi 
tor's  choice  bids  him  to  do.  Perkins  was 
willing  and  glad  to  see  the  reporter,  but 
he  would  have  kicked  the  editor  out  of 
his  house." 

"  I  never  looked  at  it  in  that  light  be 
fore,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  Well,  it's  the  only  light  to  look  at  it 
in,"  rejoined  the  Idiot.  "  When  in  battle 
an  enemy  is  routed  or  victorious  the  dis- 


credit  or  the  credit  falls  upon  the  com 
manding  officer.  In  the  newspaper  world 
the  same  rules  should  be  observed.  It  is 
the  commanding  officer  who  receives  the 
credit;  his  should  be  the  discredit  also." 

"  How  do  they  nominate  candidates  for 
such  offices  as  Mayor?"  queried  Mr.  Ped- 
agog.  "  In  convention  ?" 

"  No,"  said  the  Idiot ;  "  it  is  by  the  di 
rect  vote  of  the  people.  They  are  nomi 
nated  at  the  primaries.  Any  man  who 
has  money  enough  to  pay  for  his  tickets 
can  enter  the  race.  Primaries  are  mighty 
interesting  things.  Thaddeus  never  went 
to  a  primary  until  it  became  necessary  for 
him  to  manifest  an  interest.  He  had  been 
placed  in  nomination  by  one  of  the  local 
newspapers,  and  much  to  his  surprise  dis 
covered  that  the  main  question  that  was 
agitating  the  public  was  not  as  to  his  fit 
ness,  but  as  to  his  existence.  Ninety  per 
cent,  of  the  people  in  the  town  had  never 
heard  of  him  ;  ninety-five  per  cent,  had 
never  seen  him,  although  he  was  born  in 
the  town  and  had  lived  there  twenty  out 
of  his  thirty-two  years  of  life.  The  trou 
ble  with  him  was,  politically,  that  he 


22 


wasn't  known  to  the  saloons,  rarely  at 
tended  the  firemen's  balls,  and  was  not 
given  to  making  himself  conspicuous  gen 
erally.  To  find  himself  almost  entirely 
unknown  in  his  own  town  was  the  bitter 
est  pill  he  had  to  swallow.  A  man  who 
has  received  letters  from  Wisconsin  ask 
ing  for  his  autograph,  and  from  Texas 
asking  for  his  photograph  for  preserva 
tion  in  the  Galveston  Historical  Society, 
fondly  imagines  that  he  cuts  a  figure  in 
the  world  ;  but  when  he  travels  on  the 
railway  and  hears  two  citizens  of  his  own 
town  asking  each  other  who  the  devil  he 
is,  and  what  in  thunder  he  looks  like,  and 
where  in  creation  does  he  live,  his  pride 
suffers  a  shock,  and  his  children  are  apt 
to  go  to  bed  that  night  feeling  that  the 
old  man  isn't  the  centre  of  geniality  they 
have  fancied." 

"  Then  Perkins  isn't  known  to  his  own 
town  ?"  asked  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"Not  very  well,"  said  the  Idiot;  "he's 
known  better  now  than  he  was.  But  that 
didn't  make  any  difference  as  far  as  get 
ting  the  nomination  was  concerned.  One 
man  proposed  his  name  to  two  men, 


two  men  proposed  it  to  four,  and  the 
four  called  the  General  Committee  to 
gether.  Thaddeus  was  dragged  out  of  his 
library  and  exhibited  to  the  General  Com 
mittee,  and  they,  observing  the  patent- 
leather  shoes  and  the  silk  hat,  decided 
that  if  he  would  have  his  tickets  printed 
he'd  do." 

"But  —  excuse  me,"  said  Mr.  White- 
choker,  "  I  thought  you  said  yesterday 
that  silk  hats  and  patent-leather  shoes 
killed  a  man  politically." 

"  That's  with  voters,"  explained  the 
Idiot.  "  With  General  Committees  it's 
different.  The  General  Committee  had  a 
notion  that  a  man  who  could  afford  to 
wear  patent-leather  shoes  and  a  silk  hat 
in  hard  times  like  these  was  a  good  man 
to— to  run.  They  thought  his  leg  would 
pan  out  well." 

"  Leg?"  cried  Mrs.  Pedagog. 

"  That's  the  word,"  said  the  Idiot,  with 
a  smile.  "  In  politics,  Mrs.  Pedagog, 
there  is  a  language  that  is  as  distinct 
from  that  of  the  general  world  as  the  lan 
guage  of  love  is  distinct  from  that  of 
commerce.  The  verb  '  to-pull-his-leg ' 


a  4 


means  to  extract  from  his  pocket  all  the 
lucre  it  will  yield.  For  instance,  the  can 
didate  who  says  '  I  will  win  that  office  if  it 
costs  a  leg  '  means  '  I'll  spend  all  I've  got 
to  win.'  In  short, '  leg '  is  a  contraction  for 
'  bank  account,'  derived,  I  presume,  from 
the  word  '  legacy.'  So  it  was  that  Thad- 
deus  appealed  to  the  General  Committee, 
although  he  did  not  know  it  at  the  time ; 
and  when,  after  his  nomination,  the  Gen 
eral  Committee  began  to  discover  that 
while  Thaddeus  was  a  tariff  reformer  in 
national  politics,  he  was  also  an  extreme 
protectionist  as  far  as  his  leg  was  con 
cerned,  they  perceptibly  cooled,  and  some 
of  them  became  so  icy  that  on  election 
day  they  slid  over  to  the  other  side,  ac 
cording  to  common  report." 

"  Are  the  Republican  General  Commit 
tees  as  bad  as  that?"  asked  Mr.  White- 
choker. 

"  I  think  it  very  likely,  only  they  do 
their  work  more  piously,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  Republican  General  Committees  never 
have  less  than  two  vestrymen  and  one 
ex-Judge  upon  them,  but,  as  far  as  I  have 
been  able  to  find  out,  their  work  is  just 


as  efficacious,  as  far  as  the  elongation  of 
the  candidate's  limb  is  concerned,  and 
when  they  tax  their  veracity  it  is  always  an 
indirect  tax.  Understand  that  these  peo 
ple  gain  no  personal  advantage  from  this 
leg-pulling  exercise.  None  of  the  candi 
date's  money  goes  into  their  own  pockets, 
but  it  is  useful  for  '  incidentals,'  which  is 
merely  a  political  synonym  for  Indepen 
dent  Clubs,  beer,  cigars,  and  so  forth.  In 
dividually  these  men  are  the  soul  of  honor. 
They  cannot  be  bought  or  sold,  but  they 
regard  themselves  as  purchasing  agents 
in  the  candidate's  behalf,  and  feeling  that 
way  they  naturally  prefer  to  represent  a 
man  of  good  financial  standing." 

"How  dreadful!"  cried  Mr.  White- 
choker.  "  Do  you  mean  to  say  that  a 
vestryman  can  be  a  party  to  the  purchase 
of  votes  ?" 

"  Not  at  all !"  said  the  Idiot,  impatient 
ly.  "  Don't  misunderstand  me,  I  beg  of 
you.  I  don't  believe  anybody  ever  bought 
a  vote  anywhere.  What  they  do  with 
the  money  is  to  establish  headquarters 
for  the  Independent  Clubs.  It's  really  a 
moral  step.  If  headquarters  for  Indepen- 


26 


dent  Clubs  were  not  established  the  mem 
bers  of  those  clubs  would  spend  their 
time  in  the  saloons  instead  of  at  the  club 
headquarters.  Can't  you  see  that?  Of 
course  it  sometimes  happens  that  the 
only  rooms  available  are  directly  above, 
below,  or  behind  the  saloons,  but  they 
are  not  in  the  saloons,  which  is  all  the 
average  vestryman  can  ask." 

"And  do  the  candidates  visit  these 
clubs  and  address  them  on  the  questions 
of  the  day  ?"  asked  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  They  do  when  they  are  not  afraid  of 
the  questions  of  the  day,"  replied  the 
Idiot.  "  In  this  campaign  of  Perkins's  the 
main  question  of  the  day  has  been  '  Well, 
boys,  what  '11  you  have?'  To  this  there 
have  been  two  answers.  One  of  the  an 
swers  was  '  Beer.' " 

"And  the  other?"  queried  the  Biblio 
maniac,  seeing  that  the  Idiot  stopped  short 
at  the  word  "  beer." 

"  The  other  was  '  Well,  I  dunno.  What 
have  you  got  ?'  "  replied  the  Idiot. 

"  And  what  was  Perkins's  reply  ?"  asked 
the  Doctor. 

"  Thaddeus  had  but  one  answer  for  the 


inquisitive  and  thirsty  hordes  of  willing 
voters.  It  was  this  :  '  Gentlemen,'  said 
he,  '  I  have  no  beer,  but  I  have  an  un 
paid  tax-bill  which  is  at  your  service,' " 
replied  the  Idiot.  "  That  was  one  of  the 
things  that  helped  me  to  defeat  him. 
What  the  people  want  may  not  be  beer. 
It  is  certainly  not  tax-bills.  But  of  course 
this  was  all  said  after  he  was  nominated. 
If  he  had  said  it  before  the  primaries  he 
might  not  have  awaked  to  find  himself 
unknown  in  his  own  town  and  notorious 
outside  of  it.  There  wasn't  any  fame  in 
the  whole  business." 

"  He  ought  to  have  said  it  before,  it 
seems  to  me,"  said  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  True,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  It  would 
have  spared  him  lots  of  trouble ;  but  be 
fore  the  primaries  Thaddeus  had  a  high 
idea  as  to  the  intelligence  of  the  people," 
said  the  Idiot.  He  never  dreamed  that 
to  get  aboard  the  ship  of  state  a  man  had 
to  paddle  his  own  canoe  across  a  sea  of 
strong  drink,  but  "  when  he  went  to  the 
primary  and  found  that  it  was  held  in  a 
little  hut,  on  a  street  paved  with  mud, 
next  door  to  a  saloon,  and  surrounded  by 


28 


a  crowd  so  thirsty  that  a  Niagara  of  malt 
liquors  would  have  hardly  kept  them 
from  cracking,  he  weakened  a  little ;  but 
when  next  morning  he  read  in  the  papers 
that  he  had  been  nominated  by  a  vote  of 
nearly  fifteen  hundred,  he  braced  up  a 
little  and  said  that  the  vox  populi  was, 
after  all,  the  vox  Dei,  and  that  it  ill  be 
came  him  to  judge  the  many  worthy 
ones  by  the  thirsty  few,  who  tried  to 
'  hold  him  up  '  for  the  amber  fluid.  '  The 
people  are  all  right,  my  dear  Idiot/  said 
he.  '  Just  because  that  fellow  cornered  me 
last  night  and  wanted  what  he  called  the 
"  long  green  "  is  no  reason  why  I  should 
despair.' ' 

"  I  don't  exactly  understand,"  said  Mr. 
Whitechoker.  "  Cornered  for  the  '  long 
green  '  ?  What  is  the  '  long  green  '  ?" 

"  It  is  a  pathetic  allusion  in  the  idiom 
of  politics  to  the  two-dollar  bill,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  In  politics,  Mr.  Whitechoker,  the 
"  long  green  "  is  a  most  important  factor. 
In  the  first  place,  the  color  of  it  appeals 
most  strongly  to  the — the — the — well,  I 
may  call  it  the  balance  of  power.  This 
particular  balance  of  power  has  a  strong 


liking  for  green.  It  symbolizes  many 
things.  It  is  the  color  most  affected  by 
nature.  It  is  the  color  of — ah — creme  de 
menthe.  And  it  is  the  color  of  several 
other  things  which  awaken  sentiments  of 
a  patriotic  nature  in  the  breast  of  the— 
the  balance  of  power.  Further,  it  is  an 
appropriate  hue  for  the  man  who  puts  it 
up.  But  the  best  of  all  the  qualities  of 
the  '  long  green  '  is  the  intrinsic  value  of 
the  things  it  represents,  and  I  venture  to 
say  that  any  man  who  can  command  the 
'  long  green '  in  sufficient  bulk  can  have 
almost  anything  he  wants  in  this  world 
politically,  particularly  in  cities  where  the 
balance  of  power  is  vested  in  the  Inde 
pendent  Clubs  and  the  Taxpayers'  Griev 
ance  Associations.  However,  Thaddeus 
was  nominated  without  the  use  of  the 
'  long  green ' ;  but  I  noticed  one  thing  that 
night  of  the  primaries  which  he  did  not. 
Upon  his  arrival  at  the  hut  in  which  the 
votes  were  cast,  as  soon  as  he  was  identi 
fied  as  the  candidate,  the  air  was  rent 
with  cheers,  and  a  solid  block  of  human 
ity  gathered  before  the  saloon  doors, 
leaving  a  space  large  enough  for  Thad- 


deus  to  walk  through  into  the  saloon  in 
case  he  should  feel  the  necessity ;  but 
when  he  had  voted  and  was  seen  depart 
ing  up  the  street  there  was  not  a  sound. 
There  was  a  lack  of  enthusiasm  which 
would  have  given  a  really  ambitious  can 
didate  nervous  prostration  in  its  most 
aggravated  form." 

"And  how  did  you  account  for  that?" 
asked  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  It  was  simple  enough,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  Perkins  walked  deliberately  past  the 
door  of  the  saloon  and  never  stopped  in. 
It  was  then  that  I  began  to  be  hopeful, 
and  when  I  told  Mrs.  Perkins  her  eyes 
beamed  with  joy.  She  didn't  want  Thad- 
deus  elected  any  more  than  I  did." 


Ill 

OLD  JIM  THE  GARDENER  AND  OTHERS 

"  WHAT  you  say,"  said  Mr.Whitechok- 
er,  after  a  pause — "  what  you  say  concern 
ing  the  saloons  is  more  than  ever  con 
vincing  to  me  that  in  the  Prohibition 
movement  lies  the  hope  of  our  political 
institutions." 

"  Precisely,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  And  that 
is  all.  The  Prohibitionists  will  always 
have  the  hope,  but  the  others  will  have 
the  offices.  When  lambs  eat  lions,  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  the  Prohibition  party  will 
win,  and  not  before,  unless  the  Prohibi 
tion  candidates  make  the  saloon  canvass. 
In  Phillipseburg  it  is  true,  however,  that 
in  ten  years  the  Prohibition  vote  has 
steadily  grown.  In  1884  it  was  twenty- 
one.  In  1894  it  was  thirty-one.  In  ten 
years  from  now  it  may  get  up  to  forty- 
one,  granting  that  this  growth  continues 


and  its  leaders  are  not  driven  to  drink 
by  incessant  disappointments.  It  may 
some  day  get  to  the  point  where  it  will 
be  the  balance  of  power,  and  when  it 
does  the  country  will  be  better  off,  for 
the  reason  that  the  balance  of  power 
will  then  be  incorruptible.  A  Prohibi 
tionist,  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  is  a 
man  of  solid  principle.  If  he  and  his 
friends  form  Independent  Clubs,  they  will 
not  stand  on  the  bi- planked  platform 
known  as  '  Good  Government  for  the 
People :  Bock  for  Us,'  nor  will  he  be 
found  declaring  that  the  'long  green'  is 
mightier  than  Reason.  You  can't  buy 
a  Prohibitionist  with  money ;  and  he 
doesn't  drink  beer,  and  water  does  not 
come  in  kegs  —  which  reminds  me  of 
Thaddeus's  one  lie  in  his  campaign." 

"  Did  he  really  lie  ?"  queried  Mrs.  Ped- 
agog,  a  little  shocked. 

"  Yes,  just  once,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"A  delegation  waited  on  him  one  night— 
the  night  after  he  was  nominated.  They 
were  three  in  number,  and  they  had  a  no 
tion  that  Thaddeus  was  what  certain  poli 
ticians  call '  fruit.'  He  was  hanging  on  a 


33 


tree  ready  to  be  plucked,  they  thought. 
Thaddeus  knew  what  they  were  after  just 
as  well  as  they  did,  but  he  never  let  on ; 
talked  about  the  needs  of  the  country ; 
speculated  upon  the  vast  benefits  likely 
to  accrue  to  honest  toilers  like  them 
selves  from  the  preferment  of  his  party 
at  the  polls,  and  all  that,  when  one  of 
them  cut  him  short  with  an  intimation 
that  the  weather  had  been  very  dry  of 
late.  He  said  that  -the  community  which 
he  and  his  friends  adorned  needed  irri 
gation  ;  it  was  parched,  and  he  and  the 
seventy -five  voters  he  controlled  had 
worked  until  they  were  on  the  verge  of 
tonsilitis  to  secure  Thaddeus's  nomina 
tion.  Thaddeus  saw  that  his  hour  had 
come,  so  he  said  very  plainly  that  he  was 
sorry  to  hear  that  he  had  been  the  cause 
of  an  epidemic  of  throat  troubles,  but  he 
wasn't  a  doctor  and  didn't  feel  that  he 
could  prescribe.  Then  came  the  lie. 
'  You  see,  gentlemen,'  he  said,  '  how  nec 
essary  it  is  to  me  to  decline  to  furnish 
liquid  refreshment  to  your  association. 
I  am  not  a  rich  man.  If  I  give  it  to  you 
I  shall  have  to  give  it  to  all,  and  I  fear 


34 


you  do  not  realize  what  an  expense  that 
would  involve.  There  are  35,000  people 
in  this  town.  So  little  as  three  glasses 
of  beer  apiece  would  involve  an  ex 
penditure  of  $5250.'  'But  dey  don't  all 
drink/  said  the  leader.  '  Yer  dude  friends, 
frinstance ;  dey  wouldn't  ask  yer  fer 
nuthinV  'Oh,  wouldn't  they!'  cried 
Thaddeus.  '  Why,  a  half  -  hour  before 
you  came  here,  So-and-So,'  naming  one 
of  the  most  prominent  citizens  of  the 
town,  'called  upon  me  as  you  are  now 
calling.  He  represented  a  hundred  of 
the  Mugwump  voters  of  the  Third  Ward, 
and  what  do  you  suppose  he  wanted?' 
The  delegation  gave  it  up.  '  Cham 
pagne  !'  said  Thaddeus.  '  I  had  to  deny 
him  what  he  asked,'  he  added,  sadly, 
'and  I've  lost  the  Mugwump  vote;  but 
it  had  to  be  done.  If  I  give  you  beer, 
I've  got  to  give  champagne  to  the  Mug 
wumps,  lemonade  to  the  Independent 
Prohibitionists,  and  pure  alcohol  to  the 
Socialists  who  need  coaxing.  If  I  owned 
a  hotel  it  would  be  different.  I  might 
have  all  these  things  on  tap  and  invite 
the  whole  town  to  come  in  and  help  itself; 


35 


but  I  don't.  As  it  is,  I  am  merely  a  citi 
zen  who,  like  yourselves,  finds  it  difficult 
to  make  both  ends  meet,  and  am  willing 
to  run  for  an  unsalaried  office  in  the  hope 
of  protecting  the  pockets  of  the  tax-payer 
when  I  get  there.'  " 

"  And  did  the  delegation  see  the 
point  ?"  asked  the  Doctor. 

"  They  saw  their  point.  They  filed 
out  sadly,  but  as  the  last  one  left  he 
turned  to  Thaddeus,  who  stood  at  the 
door,  and  said  :  '  Excuse  us  for  comin', 
Mr.  Perkins.  If  there  is  any  charge  for  the 
use  of  your  parlor  for  our  little  chat,  let 
us  know.  I'm  the  treasurer  of  our  club.'  " 

"  That  was  clever,"  observed  the  Poet. 

"  It  was  indeed,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  For 
cleverness,  the  striker  in  politics  is  hard 
to  beat,  and  that's  what  makes  him  so 
hard  to  deal  with.  Old  Jim  the  Gar 
dener  proved  that.  It  took  Thaddeus 
two  weeks  to  get  rid  of  Old  Jim  the 
Gardener." 

"  And  who,  pray,  was  Old  Jim  the  Gar 
dener?"  asked  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  He  was  a  little  of  everybody,"  said 
the  Idiot.  "You  see,  Thaddeus's  fa- 


ther  had  been  a  resident  of  Phillipseburg 
twenty-five  years  before,  and  during  his 
residence  there  had  had  quite  a  siza 
ble  place.  At  one  time  he  employed  a 
man  named  Jim  to  take  charge  of  the 
lawns  and  garden  ;  and  when,  twenty-five 
years  later,  Thaddeus  found  himself  a 
candidate,  Jim,  who  had  passed  out  of 
his  recollection,  appeared  on  the  scene 
once  more.  He  was  a  man  of  infinite  va 
riety.  The  first  time  he  appeared  Thad 
deus  was  glad  to  see  him.  He  didn't 
recognize  him  at  all,  but  he  was  credulous 
and  believed  that  Old  Jim  stood  before 
him.  Besides,  Jim  didn't  want  anything 
for  his  vote.  Thaddeus  was  going  to  get 
that  anyhow ;  but  he  was  down  on  his 
luck,  and  could  use  an  old  coat,  or  a  pair 
of  shoes,  or  a  half-dollar  to  advantage.  He 
got  the  half-dollar  and  went  away.  Two 
days  later  Old  Jim  turned  up  again,  only 
this  time  he  wasn't  so  old.  He  was  ten 
years  younger  than  he  had  been  when  he 
first  called.  The  rejuvenating  influence 
of  the  half-dollar  was  remarkable.  Ten 
dollars  would  have  made  a  happy  school 
boy  of  him." 


OLD   JIM    THE   SECOND 


37 


"  I  don't  quite  see,"  said  Mr.  White- 
choker. 

"  It  was  simple  enough,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"The  second  Jim  was  not  the  first  Jim. 
It  had  been  rumored  about  that  a  man 
named  Jim  had  once  been  a  favored  em 
ploye  of  Perkins  Senior,  and  the  willing 
voter  took  advantage  of  the  fact.  In  the 
neighborhood  of  fifteen  truthful  Jameses 
tried  to  work  the  candidate  on  the  strength 
of  old  associations.  Every  one  of  them 
remembered  some  little  incident  in  Thad- 
deus's  past  life,  none  of  which  Thaddeus 
could  recall,  but  all  of  which  indicated 
that  his  boyhood  had  been  passed  largely 
in  being  rescued  from  mad  bulls,  watery 
graves,  savage  dogs,  and  tramps,  with  Old 
Jim  always  turning  up  at  the  right  mo 
ment  to  save  him.  It  finally  got  to  the 
point  where  every  time  the  front  door 
bell  rang  Thaddeus  would  smile  and  ex 
press  his  belief  that  there  was  another 
delegate  from  the  Old  Jim  Independent 
Club  at  the  door;  and  Mrs.  Perkins  de 
clared  that  she  had  no  idea  that  there 
were  so  many  Jims,  young  or  old,  in  the 
world." 


"  Did  the  supply  finally  run  out  ?"  asked 
the  Doctor,  with  a  smile. 

"  I  don't  believe  so ;  but  when  Thad- 
deus  got  to  the  beginning  of  his  hyena- 
week,  old  Jim  concluded  he'd  better  keep 
away.  The  demand  weakened,"  replied 
the  Idiot.  "The  last  time  Old  Jim 
called,  Thaddeus  was  having  all  he  could 
do  to  keep  from  crushing  teacups  in 
his  hands.  He  had  just  returned  from 
a  meeting  of  the  General  Committee, 
where  he  had  been  flayed  alive  by  some 
of  the  other  candidates,  because  of  what 
they  called  his  lack  of  interest  in  the 
fight,  which  they  claimed  he  was  show 
ing,  because  he  wouldn't  work  more  than 
twenty  hours  a  day.  One  of  them  par 
ticularly  pleased  Thaddeus  by  saying  that 
his  ward  was  lost  to  the  party  because, 
after  addressing  the  tax -payers  of  his 
section,  Perkins  had  driven  away  without 
speaking  to  the  balance  of  power,  who 
were  waiting  for  him  outside,  with  a  cafe 
not  two  yards  distant.  '  I've  got  all  I  can 
do  blowing  off  the  ward  in  my  own  inter 
est  without  doing  it  for  Mr.  Perkins,'  he 
said.  All  of  which  galled  Thaddeus  to 


such  an  extent  that  he  rose  to  pay  his 
compliments  to  the  committee  and  crit 
ical  candidates,  in  his  best  manner,  when 
his  manager  seeing  what  was  about  to 
happen,  moved  to  adjourn,  and  marched 
Thaddeus  out  in  double-quick  time. 

" '  I  wish  you  had  been  addressing  our 
African  brothers  to-night,'  said  the  man 
ager,  as  Thaddeus  entered  his  carriage. 
'  Your  face  was  black  enough  to  make 
'em  think  you'd  just  come  from  the 
Congo.  Go  home  and  get  to  bed,  and 
for  Heaven's  sake  meet  me  to-morrow 
with  another  face.  If  you  can't  get  your 
own  in  shape  by  that  time,  borrow  one, 
or  this  town  goes  Republican.' 

"  We  drove  home  in  silence.  Thad 
deus  had  been  conversed  with  sufficiently 
for  one  evening,  and  I  felt  that  even  I 
would  better  let  him  alone.  As  we  drew 
up  to  the  Perkins  house  we  observed  a 
man  sitting  in  the  corner  of  the  front 
piazza,  hidden  in  the  shadow.  When  we 
had  alighted  he  rose  up  and  approached 
us.  It  was  the  fifteenth  and  last  Old  Jim 
the  Gardener. 

" '  Hang  on  to  yourself,  Thaddeus,'  I 


said.     '  It  won't  last  more  than  a  minute, 
and  then  you  can  go  to  bed.' 

"  '  Good-evening,  Mr.  Perkins,'  said  the 
visitor. 

"  '  Evening/  replied  Thaddeus,  shortly. 

" '  I  never  thought  in  th'  old  days  that 
little  Thad  'd  ever  be  runnin'  fer  Mayor,' 
said  the  visitor. 

"  '  No  more  did  any  one  else,'  returned 
Thaddeus.  '  I  fancy,  if  my  parents  had 
guessed  it,  they'd  have  shipped  me  to 
Australia,  for  the  sake  of  the  family 
name.  Who  are  you,  and  what  do  you 
want  ?' 

" '  Ah !  ye  haven't  forgotten  me,  have 
ye,  Mr.  Perkins,  afther  all  I  did  fer  ye 
when  ye  was  a  little  chap  ?  Don't  ye  re 
member  th'  time  ye  upset  th'  bee-hive, 
an'  I  rushed  in  an'  kept  th'  bastes  from 
stingin'  ye  ?' 

"  Even  in  the  dark  I  could  see  that 
Thaddeus's  eye  flashed.  He  knew  what 
was  coming. 

"  '  Oh  yes,'  he  said.  '  I  remember  you 
well.  You  are  Old  Jim  the  Gardener,  are 
you  not?' 

" '  Sure,  an'  I  knew  ye  wouldn't  forget. 


That's  what  I  am,  Mr.  Perkins:  Old  Jim 
the  Gardener.  Those  was  good  days. 
Your  father  was  a  foine  man,  an'  he  had 
foine  boys,  too.  How's  Tommie?' 

"'Very  well,  indeed,'  said  Thaddeus. 
Then  he  tugged  me  by  the  sleeve  and 
added,  'This  is  Tommie,  Jim.  Tommie, 
you  remember  Old  Jim,  don't  you?' 

"'Certainly,' said  I.  'Jim,  how  are  you?' 

"  '  Sure,  an'  I'd  know  ye  anywhere,  Mr. 
Thomas — though,  bein'  as  it  was  so  dark, 
I  didn't  see  yer  face  well.' 

" '  It  is  rather  dark,'  said  Thaddeus, 
coldly.  '  But,  Jim,  Tom  and  I  have  been 
very  anxious  to  see  you  again.  We  were 
talking  about  it  only  yesterday.  We  don't 
forget  easily,  and  we  were  recalling  one 
little  incident  with  which  you  were  con 
nected.  You  remember  the  old  barn  that 
stood  back  of  the  house,  don't  you  ?' 

"  '  Faith,  don't  I !'  said  Jim,  unctuously. 

"  '  Well,  one  day  Tom  and  I  were  play 
ing  hide-and-seek  in  that  barn,  and  by 
mistake  upset  a  pail  of  bran  you  had  just 
been  preparing  for  the  cow.' 

"  '  Oh,  now,  Mr.  Perkins  !  Do  you  re- 
mimber  that?'  cried  Jim,  with  delight. 

6 


"  '  I  do/  said  Thaddeus.  '  I  have  as 
lively  a  recollection  of  it  as  I  have  of  the 
bee-hive  incident — only  it  was  my  brother 
Harry  you  saved  from  the  bees/ 

"  I  was  afraid  we  were  getting  into  deep 
water.  Thaddeus  never  had  a  brother 
Harry. 

"  '  Harry,  was  it  ?'  said  Jim,  with  a  slight 
tinge  of  disappointment  in  his  tone.  '  Oh 
yes,  I  remimber  now.  It  was  Harry — ah 
yes,  yes,  yes.  Is  Harry  livin',  Mr.  Perkins?' 

"  '  No/  said  Thaddeus, '  Harry  is  gone/ 

"  '  Poor  boy  !'  sighed  Jim. 

"  '  But  Tom  and  I  were  the  ones  that 
upset  the  bran,  Jim/  said  Thaddeus. 

"  '  So  ye  were/  said  Jim. 

" '  And  you  jumped  out  of  the  stall 
with  a  piece  of  rope,  Jim,  and  you  grabbed 
Tommie  by  the  neck  and  me  by  the 
waist.  You  carried  us  up  into  the  hay 
loft  and  gave  us  both  such  a  thrashing 
for  that  small  bit  of  an  accident  that  we 
haven't  forgotten  it/ 

" '  No,  indeed,  we  haven't,  Jim/  said  I. 
'  I  can  feel  that  rope  yet/ 

"'I  disremember'-  Jim  began,  but 
Thaddeus  cut  him  short. 


43 


"  '  Well,  Tommie  and  I  have  been  look 
ing  for  you  for  ten  years,  Jim,  to  pay  back 
that  debt,'  said  he,  '  and  if  you'll  wait 
here  a  second  while  we  go  in  and  take 
our  coats  off  we'll  return  that  thrashing 
with  compound  interest  for  twenty-five 
years.' 

"  With  this  Thaddeus  opened  the  front 
door  with  his  key.  We  entered,  and  after 
removing  our  overcoats,  returned  to  Old 
Jim  ;  but  Jim  had  disappeared,  and  in  the 
language  of  that  dear  old  song, '  He  nev 
er  came  back/ 

"  In  that  way,"  said  the  Idiot,  "  we  got 
rid  of  Old  Jim  the  Gardener  and  at  least 
one  vote  which  might  have  helped  us  on 
to  victory.  Whether  the  other  fourteen 
stuck  to  us  or  not  I  don't  know,  but  I 
imagine  not,  since  I  saw  two  of  them  flirt 
ing  with  the  other  man  on  Election  Day. 
It  is  probable  that  they  had  served  his 
family,  too,  in  the  good  old  days." 


IV 

SPEECHES  SPOKEN   AND   UNSPOKEN 

"  I  PRESUME  your  friend  made  a  lot  of 
speeches  —  stump  speeches  ?"  said  the 
Doctor. 

"Well,  no,  he  didn't/'  said  the  Idiot. 
"  It  was  one  of  the  curious  features  of 
this  campaign  that  Thaddeus,  who  is  usu 
ally  one  of  the  most  loquacious  of  men, 
crammed  about  as  much  silence  into  the 
three  weeks  as  it  was  possible  to  get  into 
them — that  is  to  say,  publicly.  In  pri 
vate  with  myself  and  Mrs.  Perkins  and 
young  Thaddeus  he'd  orate  by  the  hour. 
He'd  begin  with  '  Here's  a  speech  I'd  like 
to  make.'  Then  he'd  strike  an  attitude 
like  that  of  a  bronze  statue  in  the  Park, 
and  gaze  at  us  fiercely  for  a  moment. 
After  an  impressive  silence  he'd  plunge 
in  with  '  Demagogues  and  Fellow  Inebri 
ates  :  One  of  the  most  pleasurable  of  the 


A   STATUESQUE  >  ?C  oE 


45 


many  thoughts  that  arise  in  my  mind  at 
this  present  moment  is  that  my  ancestors, 
having  joined  the  great  majority  on  the 
other  side  of  the  dark  river,  cannot  now 
witness  my  humiliation,  or  penetrate  the 
veil  of  my  hypocrisy,  when  I  stand  here 
and  tell  you  that  I  consider  you  the  most 
intelligent  body  of  men  that  I  ever  ad 
dressed,  although  my  private  opinion  of 
you  is  that  you  are  an  incorrigible  body 
of  unmitigated  strikers.  Gentlemen—  and 
I  apply  the  term  to  you  with  certain  men 
tal  reservations,  for  you  are  not  gentle 
men  by  any  means  —  what  are  we  here 
for  ?  I  am  here  to  ask  you  for  your  votes, 
for  unfortunately  the  franchise  is  so  broad, 
embracing,  as  it  does,  ignorance,  vicious- 
ness,  and  corruptibility,  that  while  to  a 
man  of  principle  your  votes  are  a  dishon 
or,  they  are  likewise  a  necessity.  You 
are  here  to  listen  respectfully  until  I  get 
through,  after  which  you  will  seek  infor 
mation  as  to  the  size  of  my  bank  account 
and  my  standing  in  the  Saloon  Keepers 
Bradstreet.  Well,  gentlemen,  I  arn  a 
busted  community  as  far  as  you  are  con 
cerned,  and  the  saloon  keepers  do  not 


46 


know  me.  But  I  do  not  wish  to  appear 
illiberal.  I  estimate,  upon  looking  about 
me,  that  you  are  three  hundred  and  fifty 
in  number.  I  will  purchase  one  schooner 
of  beer.  Each  of  you  may  have  his  name 
written  upon  a  piece  of  paper.  The 
pieces  of  paper  may  be  placed  in  a  hat 
of  your  own  selection,  and,  such  is  my 
confidence  in  your  judgment,  a  chair 
man  elected  by  your  suffrage  may  draw 
from  that  hat  one  of  those  slips.  He 
whose  name  is  on  that  slip  may  have 
the  beer,  or  if  he  chooses,  may  share  it 
with  the  rest  of  you.  Gentlemen,  thank 
ing  you  for  your  attention,  and  hoping 
that  Election  Day  and  night  will  show 
that  we  are  true  to  our  principles,  I  bid 
you  good-evening.  Sic  semper  tyrannis. 
Status  quo  ante  in  Honolulu!  " 

"  So  !"  cried  Mr.  Pedagog,  who  is  a  Re 
publican.  "  So  !  You  admit,  do  you,  that 
to  get  into  office  a  Democrat  has  to  make 
terms  with  these  people  ?" 

"  No,"  returned  the  Idiot,  "  I  admit 
nothing  of  the  sort.  When  a  Democrat 
is  opposed  to  a  Republican  who  will  re 
fuse  to  make  terms  with  such  people,  the 


47 


striker  cuts  no  figure  in  politics.  His 
fangs  are  drawn.  He  can  do  nothing. 
It  is  only  when  the  other  side  is  willing 
to  make  a  bid  for  him  that  he  has  any 
power.  Unfortunately,  however,  in  this 
case  the  striker  knew  that  one  side  at 
least  wanted  him.  There  was  a  demand, 
and  when  there  is  a  demand  for  the 
striker  he  sees  to  it  that  there  is  a  sup 
ply.  He  is  a  business  man,  and  he  works 
on  business  principles.  He  will  take  the 
money  and  drink  the  beer  of  both  parties. 
He  will  sell  his  vote  to  any  one  who  buys, 
and  then,  thanks  to  the  existing  ballot 
law,  he  will  vote  as  he  pleases.  This 
time  he  cast  a  complimentary  vote  for 
Perkins." 

"  And  yet  Perkins  was  defeated  ?"  said 
Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  Precisely,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  Out  of 
compliment  to  Perkins,  the  strikers  voted 
against  him." 

Mr.  Pedagog  tried  to  think  of  some 
thing  to  say,  but  not  being  much  of  a 
politician  his  mind  refused  to  work.  Con 
sequently  he  missed  the  "  tide  which  taken 
at  the  flood  leads  on  to  fortune." 


"  But  speeches  were  made  in  Thad- 
deus's  behalf,"  continued  the  Idiot.  "  And 
considering  the  fact  that  I  didn't  want  to 
have  him  elected,  I  was  very  glad  they 
were  made.  There  was  one  man  who 
could  make  campaign  speeches  of  the 
finest  type.  One  night  he  said, '  When  I 
make  a  speech  I  find  that  I  invariably  put 
my  foot  in  it.  When  I  don't  speak  I  also 
find  that  I  put  my  foot  in  it.'  Thaddeus, 
who  had  been  awaiting  his  chance,  re 
marked  as  a  diversion,  '  You  seem  to  be 
in  it  with  both  feet.'  That  brought 
down  the  house.  Everybody  who  heard 
it  said,  '  He's  a  daisy,'  or  '  He's  the  man 
for  the  place,'  and  for  a  time  I  was  scared. 
I  thought  Thaddeus  might  be  elected— 
they  were  so  enthusiastic  over  a  man  who 
could  say  a  thing  like  that.  I  lay  awake 
all  that  night  wondering  how  I  could 
counteract  the  effect  of  his  jest,  and 
finally  I  decided  that  there  was  only 
one  thing  to  do,  which  was  to  get  the 
man  who  was  always  in  it  with  both 
feet  to  go  about  and  make  speeches  in 
Thaddeus's  behalf.  He  was  the  man  / 
wanted.  I  persuaded  him  to  go  about 


49 


with  Thaddeus  and  make  the  speeches. 
A  man  who  could  put  both  feet  in  it  was 
just  the  man  to  beat  him,  and  he  went. 
I  was  disappointed  at  first.  He  made 
speeches  that  were  really  fine.  He  con 
vinced  the  voters  that  Perkins  loved 
them,  and  that  wages  would  be  increased 
one  hundred  per  cent,  if  he  were  elected ; 
but  one  night  he  was  carried  away  by  his 
enthusiasm,  and  in  dwelling  upon  Thad- 
deus's  achievements  as  a  poet  he  put  a 
spoke  in  his  wheel  which  effectually  killed 
him.  He  called  him  a  son  of  the  Muses 
and  a  native  of  Parnassus." 

"  Is  that  considered  a  disgrace  in  Phil- 
lipseburg?"  asked  the  Poet,  with  a  curve 
on  his  lip. 

"Not  at  all,"  said  the  Idiot.  "Only 
the  good  people  imagined  that  an  at 
tempt  had  been  made  to  deceive  them. 
They  had  been  told  that  Thaddeus  was 
born  in  Phillipseburg,  and  then  to  have  a 
campaign  orator  let  the  cat  out  of  the 
bag  by  saying  that  he  was  a  native  of 
Parnassus  was  evidence  that  they  had 
been  betrayed,  and  that  the  Democratic 
party  was  trying  to  foist  a  carpet-bagger 


on  the  community.  As  one  of  the  Re 
publican  orators  very  properly  said, '  The 
newspaper  says  he  was  born  in  Phillipse- 
burg.  Did  he  deny  thot  ?  He  did  not. 
This  speaker  says  he  was  born  at  Parnas 
sus.  Does  he  deny  thot  ?  He  does  not. 
What,  thin,  do  we  have  to  conclude  in 
conclusion  ?  Wan  of  two  horns  of  a  di 
lemma.  Either  he  says  thot  which  is  un 
true,  or  else  he's  twins.  Is  he  twins  ?  No. 
Thin  whot  ?  He's  a  desayver  !'  " 

The  Poet  laughed.  "  It's  a  wonder 
they  didn't  investigate  the  Muses,"  he 
said.  "  If  they  had  done  that  they'd  have 
discovered  that  there  never  was  a  Muse 
named  Perkins,  so  that  his  claim  to  par 
entage  there  would  have  been  shown  to 
be  unfounded." 

"  That's  precisely  what  Thaddeus  him 
self  said,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  If  it 
hadn't  been  that  the  Republican  General 
Committee  had  a  man  on  it  who  knew 
what  a  Muse  was  I  think  very  likely 
they'd  have  made  a  great  point  about 
that." 

"  It's  singular,  I  think,"  observed  the 
Poet,  "considering  the  standard  of  edu- 


cation  which  according  to  your  story  pre 
vails  in  Phillipseburg,  that  there  was 
found  even  on  the  Republican  General 
Committee  a  man  so  erudite." 

"  I  can  only  account  for  it  myself,"  said 
the  Idiot,  "  on  the  assumption  that  the 
individual  had  a  son  in  college  who  could 
enlighten  the  old  gentleman.  However 
it  was,  they  made  the  discovery  in  time 
to  save  the  Muses  the  annoyance  of  a 
political  investigation." 

"Then  you  find  that  campaign  speech 
es  are  of  little  value?"  suggested  the 
Doctor. 

"  They  have  no  value  whatsoever  out 
side  of  the  philological  enrichment  of  the 
English  language,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"  To  Thaddeus  they  were  profitable  in 
the  new  words  they  taught  him.  His 
vocabulary  always  was  a  good  one,  but  I 
think  he  will  ultimately  recover  his  cam 
paign  expenses  from  the  sale  of  a  series 
of  papers  he  is  writing  on  '  Words  I 
Have  Met :  Being  a  Few  Speculations 
upon  the  Philology  of  Politics,  With  a 
Brief  Essay  upon  the  Orthoepy  of  the 
Professional  Striker.' " 


"  If  he  could  sell  that  title  at  space 
rates  he'd  make  a  fortune,"  said  the  Poet. 

"  He  could  indeed,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  But  he'll  make  more  by  retaining  it  for 
his  own  use." 

"  I  shall  be  quite  interested  to  see  that 
book  when  it  comes  out,"  said  Mr.  Ped- 
agog.  "  If  there's  one  thing  that  interests 
me  more  than  another,  it  is  the  study  of 
language." 

"You'll  find  it  up  to  your  expectations, 
I  think,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  There  will  be 
one  drawback,  however.  It  will  be  im 
possible  in  writing  to  convey  any  idea  as 
to  the  inflection  or  the  gestures  of  the 
speakers  who  introduced  these  words  to 
Perkins.  If  he  could  publish  the  book 
in  an  Edison  phonograph  with  a  kineto- 
scope  attachment,  instead  of  putting  it 
out  in  printed  form,  bound  up  between 
covers,  it  would  be  far  more  interesting. 
For  instance,  there  is  the  word  '  incubent.' 
To  get  the  full  force  and  value  of  such  a 
word  you  need  to  hear  it  spoken  by  its 
inventor.  Thaddeus  met  this  word  one 
afternoon  at  a  small  gathering  of  men 
who  took  the  campaign  as  seriously  as  if 


53 


it  were  a  dose  of  pure  cod-liver  oil.  They 
waited  on  Thaddeus  to  assure  him  of 
their  support,  and  the  spokesman,  in  spite 
of  repeated  invitations  to  sit  down,  in 
sisted  upon  remaining  on  his  feet  while 
he  delivered  his  address.  It  was  a  first- 
rate  address  too,  and  well  worthy  of  be 
ing  delivered  standing.  In  fact,  if  the 
speaker  had  delivered  it  while  sitting 
down,  it  would  not  have  been  half  so  ef 
fective,  since  it  needed  to  be  punctuated 
by  stoopings  and  straightenings,  by  lofty 
swoops  of  the  right  hand,  by  leanings  to 
the  right  and  left,  but  more  particularly 
by  sudden  poisings  on  the  toes,  which  in 
creased  by  a  foot  or  more  the  stature  of 
the  speaker,  and  so  giving  to  his  remarks 
an  emphasis  which  made  doubt  as  to  his 
sincerity  absolutely  impossible." 

"  May  I  ask  what  was  the  significance 
of  the  word  incubent  ?"  asked  Mr.  White- 
choker. 

"  It  was  a  synonym  for  incumbent,"  said 
Thaddeus.  "  The  speaker  began  by  sol 
emnly  assuring  the  candidate  that  he  and 
the  other  gentlemen  present  were  '  here.' 
This  was  not  susceptible  to  denial,  and 


54 


Thaddeus  acquiesced.  The  committee 
undoubtedly  were  there.  There  was  ma 
terial  evidence  to  that  effect.  He  then 
went  on  to  say  that  Thaddeus  was  a  gen 
tleman,  and  perhaps  fearing  that  the  can 
didate  had  not  been  notified  of  the  fact, 
assured  him  that  he  had  been  nominated 
for  the  highest  office  in  the  gift  of  the 
people  of  Phillipseburg.  To  this  the 
candidate  also  agreed.  He  had  known  it 
for  two  or  three  days ;  but  he  didn't  let 
his  visitors  into  that  secret,  although  he 
manifested  no  surprise  at  the  information. 
'  We,  Mr.  Perkins,'  continued  the  speaker, 
raising  himself  on  his  toes, '  support  you 
because  we  think  you  are  the  man  for  the 
place.  We  want  no  Purantic  laws — 

"  Excuse  me,"  interrupted  Mr.  White- 
choker  ;  "  but  what  was  that  word  ?" 

"  Purantic,"  replied  the  Idiot.  "That 
was  another  new  word.  It  is  a  political 
adjective  signifying  Puritanic,  which  the 
speaker  explained  by  saying,  '  By  means 
of  which  I  mean  the  blue -laws  of  New 
England  —  but  we  do  want  clean  govi- 
ment,  which  you  will  give  us.  We  feel 
that  you  will  honor  the  chair ;  the  chair 


55 


will  not  honor  you.'  And  then  came  the 
great  word.  Raising  his  arm  almost  to 
the  ceiling  and  standing  on  his  toes,  the 
speaker  added,  thunderously  enough  to 
wake  the  baby  in  the  nursery  above, '  Can 
the  same  be  said  of  the  present  incubent?' 
The  other  members  of  the  committee 
shook  their  heads.  It  was  evident  that 
they  did  not  think  the  present  incubent 
was  a  great  man,  and  as  it  was  Perkins's 
agreeable  week,  he  also  shook  his  head, 
and  intimated  that  he  thought  the  speak 
er  was  undeniably  right.  And  so  it  went 
on  for  thirty-eight  minutes.  New  words 
were  coined  at  the  rate  of  five  a  minute, 
until  finally,  the  speaker  sat  down,  and 
Thaddeus,  who  had  been  wildly  endeavor 
ing  to  keep  his  face  straight  for  the  past 
twenty  minutes,  felt  compelled  to  bring 
out  his  little  brown  jug  and  assure  the 
committee  that  he  would  be  glad  to  pay 
the  rent  of  their  club-rooms  and  settle  up 
the  accounts  of  the  delinquent  members, 
in  order  that  so  worthy  an  institution  as 
the  one  they  represented  might  be  main 
tained  to  fight  for  tariff  reform  and  an 
honest  dollar  forever." 


"Ah!"  put  in  Mr.  Pedagog.  "They 
did  pull  his — ah — his  leg,  then  ?" 

"  No,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  Not  a  bit 
of  it.  He  gave  them  ten  dollars,  it  is  true, 
but  see  what  he  got  back  in  the  way  of 
new  words  !  It's  a  mean  man  and  a  bad 
business  man  who  is  unwilling  to  pay  a 
paltry  ten  dollars  for  five  hundred  dollars' 
worth  of  additions  to  his  vocabulary/' 

"  And  did  these  fellows  support  him  ?" 
asked  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  Oh,  as  for  that,"  said  the  Idiot,  "the 
existing  ballot  law  prevents  us  from  de 
termining.  But  as  I  remember  the  fig 
ures,  he  didn't  run  more  than  eighty-nine 
votes  behind  his  ticket  in  their  district." 


V 

THE   SILVER   LINING 

"  I  JUDGE  from  what  you  have  told  us  of 
your  friend's  campaign,"  said  Mr.  White- 
choker,  "that  a  candidate's  life  is  not  a 
happy  one.  Is  there  no  let-up  to  his 
miseries  ?" 

Mr.  Pedagog  frowned.  He  always 
frowned  when  the  good  clergyman  let  his 
tongue  slip  into  the  vernacular  of  the  Idiot. 

"  Was  there  no  alleviation  ?"  added  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  hastily,  himself  observing 
his  error. 

"  Oh  yes,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  The 
cloud  of  a  political  canvass  has  its  silver 
lining,  just  like  all  other  clouds.  The 
man  who  more  than  any  one  else  man 
aged  Thaddeus's  canvass  really  kept  him 
alive,  I  believe.  If  it  hadn't  been  for 
him,  Thaddeus  would  undoubtedly  have 
thrown  himself  into  the  river." 


"  He  was  an  experienced  politician  ?" 
queried  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  He  was  a  Past  Grand  Master  of  the  Art 
of  Politics,"  said  the  Idiot,  with  enthu 
siasm.  "  In  his  hands  Politics  was  not 
only  a  science,  it  was  lifted  to  the  level  of 
an  art ;  and  after  the  returns  came  in  and 
Thaddeus  knew  he  was  defeated,  his  chief 
regret  was  for  his  manager,  whose  disap 
pointment  was  great ;  and  he  told  me  in 
confidence  before  he  went  to  bed  that 
night  that  while  he  never  wanted  to  enter 
the  political  arena  again,  he  was  glad  he 
had  made  the  fight,  because  it  had  brought 
him  so  much  into  contact  with  the  ex- 
Senator.  His  manager  was  an  ex-State 
Senator,  and  Thaddeus  always  addressed 
him  by  that  title.  It  was,  '  Mr.  Mayor, 
you'll  have  to  do  this,'  and  '  Very  well, 
ex-Senator,  if  you  say  so,  so  must  it  be,' 
with  them  all  the  time.  Thaddeus's  confi 
dence  in  the  man  was  only  equalled  by  one 
other  bit  of  trustfulness  I  ever  knew  of." 

"  And  what  was  that  ?"  asked  the  Bib 
liomaniac. 

"  My  own  confidence  in  the  man,"  re 
plied  the  Idiot ;  "  and  when  Perkins  and  I 


59 


agree  in  matters  of  that  kind,  there  is  no 
shadow  of  room  for  distrust.  I  truly  never 
saw  such  a  man  as  the  ex-Senator  in  my 
life  before.  He  was  always  genial,  full  of 
entertaining  anecdotes  of  how  previous 
candidates  had  done  things,  a  thorough 
judge  of  human  nature,  and  with  a  faculty 
for  talking  to  people  he  had  never  seen  be 
fore  as  if  he  had  known  them  all  his  life, 
that  excited  my  highest  admiration.  I 
remember  one  afternoon  he  and  Thad- 
deus  and  I  were  walking  up  the  main 
avenue  of  Phillipseburg,  and  we  saw  a 
more  or  less  important-looking  personage 
bearing  down  upon  us. 

" '  Who  is  this  fellow  ?'  asked  Thad- 
deus. 

"'I  give  it  up,'  said  the  ex-Senator; 
*  but  I  guess  he  knows.  He  acts  like  a 
man  who'd  heard  of  himself.  I'll  intro 
duce  you  to  him.' 

"  '  How  the  deuce  '11  you  do  that  if  you 
don't  know  him  ?'  asked  Thaddeus. 

"  '  Ho  !'  laughed  the  ex-Senator.  '  If 
that  was  the  hardest  thing  we  had  to  do, 
I'd  write  you  a  certificate  of  election  to? 
night.' 


"Then  he  hailed  the  stranger,"  con 
tinued  the  Idiot.  "The  fellow  looked 
surprised,  but  stopped  when  the  ex-Sen 
ator  said  to  him :  '  I  want  you  to  know 
our  candidate  for  Mayor.  This  is  Mr. 
Perkins;  we've  got  him  on  our  ticket 
this  year,  and  we  hope  to  elect  him.' 

" '  Well,  I  guess  you'll  do  it,'  said  the 
stranger.  '  Everybody  I  see  says  he's 
likely  to  get  in.  I  was  putting  up  some 
awnings  for  Mr.  Baisley  up  on  High 
Street  this  morning,  and  Mr.  Baisley 's 
man  told  me  everything  was  going  your 
way.' 

"  '  That's  good  news,'  said  Perkins. 

" '  How  is  the  awning  business  ?' 
asked  the  ex-Senator,  cordially.  '  Pret 
ty  brisk  ?' 

"  '  Yes,  considering  the  times,'  said  the 
stranger. 

"  '  Well,  do  what  you  can  for  us,'  said 
the  ex-Senator.  '  We  want  to  carry  this 
election  unanimously  if  we  can,  you 
know.' 

"  '  Certainly,'  said  the  stranger.  '  But 
I'm  a  New  *  Yorker,  myself,  and  can't 
vote.' 


6r 


"  '  Oh,  we  understand  that,' said  the  ex- 
Senator,  without  a  tremor  ;  '  but  a  man 
in  your  position  has  influence.  I've  seen 
you  at  work  here  in  town,  and  I  guess  if 
you'll  put  in  a  word  or  two  with  your 
friends  it'll  help.  You  aren't  related  to 
Farrell,  are  you  ?' 

"  '  No,  my  name's  Tompkins,'  returned 
the  other. 

"'I  know;  but  didn't  Farrell's  daugh 
ter  marry  into  the  Tompkins  family  ? 
I'm  sure  I  heard  so ;  but  anyhow,  Mr. 
Tompkins,  I'm  glad  to  have  had  this 
chance  to  have  Mr.  Perkins  meet  you, 
and  we  hope  you  won't  forget  us.'  With 
which  Tompkins  walked  off  more  im 
portant  than  ever,  and  our  party  moved 
on. 

"'Ex-Senator,'  said  Thaddeus,  'you're 
a  wonder.  Did  you  ever  see  Tompkins 
before  ?' 

"'No.' 

«« '  Who's  Farrell  ?' 

"  '  Farrell  ?  Oh,  Farrell's  my  decoy 
relative.  Whenever  I  want  to  find  out  a 
man's  name  I  ask  him  if  he  isn't  related 
to  Farrell,  and  it  generally  works.  As 


62 


you  saw,  this  fellow  immediately  told  me 
his  name  was  Tompkins  when  I  spoke  of 
Farrell.' 

" '  But  if  you'd  asked  him  his  name 
straight  out  he'd  have  told  you.' 

" '  That's  true  enough  ;  but  that's  not 
politics.  Tompkins  thinks  now  that  I 
knew  he  was  Tompkins  all  along.  He 
has  an  idea  we've  been  looking  for  him 
and  that  he  amounts  to  something.' 

" '  And  is  there  such  a  person  as  Far 
rell?'  I  asked. 

"  '  Not  that  I  know  of,'  returned  the 
ex-Senator. 

" '  Well,  does  it  always  work  ?'  asked 
Thaddeus. 

"  '  It  never  failed  but  once,'  said  the 
ex-Senator;  '  and  that  was  when  the  boys 
put  up  a  game  on  me.  I  introduced  old 
man  Dobbs,  who  was  running  for  Assem 
bly,  to  a  fellow  just  as  I  introduced  you 
to  Tompkins,  and  when  I  asked  him  if 
he  wasn't  related  to  Farrell  he  knocked 
me  over.' 

"  '  Knocked  you  down  ?'  said  Thad 
deus. 

*' '  No,'  replied  the  ex-Senator,  with  a 


laugh  over  his  reminiscence.  '  But  he 
might  just  as  well  have.  He  floored  me 
with,  "  Me  ?  Me  related  to  Farrell  ?  Be- 
gobs,  I  am  Farrell !" 

"  You  can  very  well  imagine,"  said  the 
Idiot,  "that  while  he  was  with  the  ex- 
Senator,  Thaddeus  led  a  perfectly  happy 
life,  though  I  don't  think  his  period  of 
chaperonage  was  an  unmixed  delight  to 
the  ex-Senator,  particularly  when  Thad 
deus  reached  his  hyena-week,  at  which 
time,  after  an  hour  and  a  half  of  the 
hardest  kind  of  work  trying  to  infuse  a 
little  geniality  into  the  candidate's  nat 
ure,  he  reverted  to  his  suggestion  that 
a  competent  comedian  should  be  import 
ed  from  New  York,  made  up  to  look  like 
Thaddeus,  with  whom  the  balance  of  the 
canvass  could  be  made. 

" '  You'd  better  get  a  tragedian  instead 
of  a  comedian,'  said  Thaddeus.  '  A  man 
of  death  would  more  fully  represent  me 
at  this  stage  of  the  game.' 

"  '  We  don't  want  a  tragedian,'  said  the 
ex-Senator.  '  Comedians  are  better  for 
politics.  We  want  a  man  who'll  go  about 
and  jolly  the  voters.  You  couldn't  jolly 


a  hitching-post  in  your  present  frame  of 
mind.'" 

"  There's  another  new  word,"  said  Mr. 
Pedagog.  "  Jollying !  What  is  the  mean 
ing  of  the  verb  to  jolly  ?" 

"  To  jolly  ?"  cried  the  Idiot.  "  Why,  my 
dear  sir,  where  have  you  lived  ?  To  jolly 
is  as  old  as  the  franchise." 

"  That  may  be,  and  yet  until  this  I  have 
never  encountered  it,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog; 
"and  I  doubt  that  my  good  friend  Mr. 
Whitechoker,  in  all  his  experience  with 
the  vernacular,  has  ever  heard  it  before," 
he  added,  severely. 

"  It  is  new  to  me,"  observed  Mr.  White- 
choker,  meekly. 

"  Well,  I  am  surprised,"  said  the  Idiot. 
"  Why,  jollying  plays  so  large  a  part  in 
politics  that  I've  really  found  myself  won 
dering  why  politics  isn't  called  jollytics. 
These  schools  of  political  science  will 
never  be  truly  successful  until  they  have 
a  chair  in  jollying  with  a  good  jollier  to 
fill  it.  I  think  the  genial  old  gentleman 
who  occasionally  imbibes  is  the  man  for 
the  place.  But  to  jolly  is  to— er — to  slap, 
to  treat,  to  set  up." 


"  Well,  I  declare !"  said  .the  Biblioma 
niac.  "  It  appears  to  me  that  your  defi 
nition  is  worse  than  your  verb.  Do  you 
mean  to  tell  me  that  by  slapping  a  voter 
"  you  can  win  his  sympathy?" 

"Certainly,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  A 
candidate  can  do  more  with  a  slap  than 
he  can  with  an  argument.  Voters — that 
is,  the  balance  of  power — don't  want  logic ; 
they  want  slaps,  set-ups,  jollying.  If  they 
get  the  slap,  they  know  they're  going  to 
have  the  set-up." 

"  Well,  I  suppose  you  know  what  you 
mean,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog,  wearily  ;  "  but 
I'll  be  hanged — I  mean  blessed — if  I  do." 

"  Far  be  it  from  me  to  keep  you  in  ig 
norance,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I'll  try  to  ex 
plain.  You  are  aware,  I  suppose,  that 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  human  nature  in 
the  world?" 

"  I  have  observed  some  of  it,"  said  Mr. 
Pedagog,  dryly.  "  Never  very  much  in 
you,  however.  There's  something  super 
natural  about  you." 

"  You  flatter  me,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  I 
am  only  mortal.  But,  as  I  suggested,  and 
as  you  agreed,  you  are  aware  that  there 

9 


66 


is  such  a  thing  as  human  nature  in  the 
world,  and  the  value  of  jollying  is  based 
entirely  upon  it.  The  general  run  of  hu 
man  beings  are  proud  of  a  seeming  inti 
macy  with  conspicuous  persons.  Now, 
the  voter,  pure  and  simple — if  there  is  a 
pure  and  simple  voter — is,  as  a  rule,  of  the 
inconspicuous  type,  and  often  it  happens 
that  he  is  jealous  of  the  prominence  of 
the  candidate.  To  offset  this  jealous  feel 
ing,  the  candidate,  meeting  the  inconspic 
uous  voter  on  the  street,  slaps  him  on  the 
back  and  shakes  him  by  the  shoulders,  or 
pokes  him  in  the  ribs,  cracks  a  joke  with 
him,  and  ends  up  by  asking  him  to  have 
a  cigar  or  to  take  a  drink.  This  is  why 
I  think  my  genial  friend  would  success 
fully  fill  a  chair  of  jollying  in  a  school  of 
political  sciences.  He  knows  how  to  do 
it,  and  could  give  points  even  to  college 
men.  But  this  jollying  act,  this  slap,  is 
very  pleasing  to  the  person  who  is  slapped, 
because  he  thinks  it  makes  the  public 
think  he  is  a  close  personal  friend  of  the 
candidate,  and  he  adds  an  imaginary  cu 
bit  to  his  stature  as  he  walks  home.  A 
man  has  got  to  be  a  good  deal  of  an  actor, 


or  a  perfect  man-about-town,  however,  to 
be  a  good  jollier;  and  while  Thaddeus 
has  taken  part  in  amateur  theatricals,  he 
wasn't  equal  to  this,  and  as  a  man-about- 
town  he  is  only  moderately  successful. 
He  was  the  worst  jollier  I  ever  saw,  be 
cause  when  he  slapped  a  citizen  or  poked 
his  ribs,  it  was  done  in  such  a  way  that  it 
resembled  an  assault  rather  than  an  act 
of  conciliation — in  fact,  he  did  lose  one 
vote  by  a  slap.  He  hit  a  cab-driver  on 
the  back  at  a  mass-meeting,  intending  it, 
of  course,  as  an  act  of  sociability;  but  the 
cab-driver  had  been  drinking,  and  was  hav- 

o " 

ing  all  he  could  do  to  stand  up  anyhow. 
The  slightest  tap  would  have  upset  him ; 
but  Thaddeus,  failing  to  note  his  condi 
tion,  gave  him  a  whack  that  sent  him 
headlong  under  the  presiding  officer's  ta 
ble.  The  fellow  was  madder  than  a  hor 
net,  and  departed  breathing  vengeance 
against  the  Democracy,  from  the  Game 
Constable  up  to  President  Cleveland. 

"'That  settles  it,'  said  the  ex-Senator, 
when  we  told  him.  '  No  more  personal 
jollying  unless  you  have  an  idea  you're 
going  to  win  this  fight  by  a  unanimous 


68 


vote.  If  I  believed  that,  I'd  go  out  and 
jolly  with  you  after  your  peculiar  way. 
There  are  about  nine  hundred  voters  here 
I'd  like  to  jolly  into  the  river.'  " 

"Then  in  politics  familiarity  does  not 
breed  contempt  ?"  said  the  Doctor. 

"  Yes,  it  does,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  Only 
it  makes  the  candidate  despise  himself.  I 
remember  Thaddeus's  return  home  after 
his  first  experience  with  that  sort  of  thing. 
He  was  white  as  a  sheet,  and  Mrs.  Per 
kins  was  quite  alarmed.  She  thought  he 
was  about  to  collapse.  There  was  noth 
ing  the  matter  with  him  physically,  how 
ever.  He  had  been  slapping  inebriates 
on  the  back  and  digging  the  ribs  of  loaf 
ers  for  two  hours,  and  one  of  the  loafers 
had  dug  back  and  called  him  Taddy,  and 
it  made  him  sick  in  his  mind. 

11 '  Look  at  my  necktie,'  he  added. 

"  We  looked.  It  had  been  a  white  tie 
when  Thaddeus  put  it  on.  Now  it  was  a 
gray,  dusty  black. 

"'That  illustrates  a  discovery  I've 
made,'  said  Thaddeus.  '  The  people,  when 
they  argue  on  a  political  question,  stand 
directly  before  the  person  they  argue  with, 


stretch  their  fingers  apart  as  far  as  they 
can,  and  emphasize  their  points  by  laying 
that  outstretched  hand,  like  a  waffle,  on 
the  chest  of  the  person  to  be  convinced. 
My  necktie  was  ruined  by  a  coal-heaver, 
who  hoped  thereby  to  impress  upon  my 
mind  the  importance  of  his  following, 
controlling,  as  he  did,  one  hundred  and 
seventy -five  votes,  which  I  could  have 
iM'd  come  and  speak  upon  the  issues  of 
the  day  at  O'Brien's  Whiskey  Palace  in 
Grape  Street.  I  see  now  why  candidates 
are  not  allowed  to  wear  evening  dress,  as 
well  as  why  voters  of  that  stamp  al 
most  invariably  go  without  neckties.  A 
dress-shirt  would  look  like  an  illustrat 
ed  volume  on  palmistry  after  one  meet 
ing  with  those  waffle  -  handed  sons  of 
toil. 

"  '  It  was  awful,'  Thaddeus  added.  '  I 
thought  I'd  never  get  away ;  but  thanks  to 
the  ex-Senator  I  got  out  of  it.  He  saw 
me  getting  white,  and  up  he  came,  impa 
tiently  snapping  to  the  cover  of  his  watch. 
"Really,  Mr.  Perkins,"  he  said,  "you'll 
have  to  hurry.  It's  after  time  now,  and 
you  know  the  engagement  on  the  hill." 


Well,  I  didn't  know  it,  but  I  pretended 
to,  and  out  we  went.' 

" '  Where  is  the  engagement  on  the 
hill  ?'  asked  Thaddeus,  wearily,  as  they 
entered  the  carriage. 

"  '  At  your  own  house,'  said  the  ex-Sen 
ator. 

"  '  Didn't  I  tell  you  I  wouldn't  have  this 
confounded  business  brought  into  my 
house  ?'  said  Thaddeus,  querulously. 

'"Yes,  you  did,  my  dear  fellow,'  re 
turned  the  manager,  kindly.  '  But  this 
time  it  couldn't  be  helped.  You  keep 
your  bed  at  home,  and  the  engagement  I 
have  for  you  now  is  that  you  go  home 
right  away  and  go  to  bed.'  " 

"  I  don't  wonder  Thaddeus  liked  that 
fellow,"  said  Mr.  Pedagog. 

"  Nor  I,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  For  to 
my  mind  he  is  one  of  the  salt  of  the 
earth.  He  was  unselfishness  personified ; 
his  own  comfort  was  nothing  so  long  as 
he  could  by  a  personal  sacrifice  save 
Thaddeus  from  annoyance,  and,  as  I  told 
Perkins,  if  he  ever  forgets  the  ex-Senator 
he  deserves  himself  to  be  thrown  into 
the  most  oblivious  kind  of  oblivion  ob- 


tainable.  And  he  replied  that  he  agreed 
with  me,  and  as  long  as  he  lives  I  believe 
that  the  ex  -  Senator's  name  will  stand 
pretty  high  up  on  the  list  of  his  real 
friends." 


VI 

CONCLUSION 

"THERE  was  one  other  bright  spot  in 
Thaddeus's  campaign,"  said  the  Idiot; 
"that  was  his  venerable  friend,  the  editor 
of  the  Phillipseburg  Evening  Star.  A 
country  town  like  Phillipseburg  never 
amounts  to  anything  unless  it  has  an 
evening  paper.  Morning  papers  count 
for  nothing.  They  never  get  out  in  time 
for  the  men  who  have  to  go  to  the  city 
to  read  them ;  but  the  editor  of  an  even 
ing  paper  has  all  day  to  work,  and  as  he 
relies  on  the  New  York  morning  papers 
for  his  news  and  nine-tenths  of  his  edi 
torials,  he  manages  to  present  to  his 
readers  a  very  creditable  journal.  Of 
course  it  is  a  great  tax  upon  his  eyesight 
and  his  thumb,  but  generally  he  is  equal 
to  the  task." 

"  Excuse  me,"  interrupted  Mr.  Pedagog. 


73 


"  You  speak  of  a  great  tax  upon  the 
thumb  of  the  editor  of  a  country  paper. 
I  don't  quite  understand." 

"  Naturally,  not  being  familiar  with  the 
methods  of  country  editors,"  said  the 
Idiot.  "  If,  however,  you  had  ever  spent 
a  morning  with  the  editor  of  an  evening 
journal  published  in  the  suburbs,  and 
seen  how  industriously  his  thumb  works 
with  the  scissors,  cutting  out  that  which 
has  pleased  the  editorial  eye,  you  would 
comprehend  my  meaning  at  once.  Coun 
try  editors  suffer  from  what  financiers  call 
coupon  paralysis ;  it  always  attacks  the 
thumb,  although  among  financiers  it 
comes  from  handling  coupon  scissors, 
while  with  the  rural  editor  it  is  the  direct 
result  of  too  close  application  to  the  edi 
torial  shears.  It  imparts  a  tired  feeling 
to  the  thumb,  which  is  not  to  be  remedied 
by  anything  save  absolute  rest.  But  the 
thumb  of  the  editor  of  the  Evening  Star 
is  a  power.  It  has  worked  incessantly 
for  years,  and  has  as  yet  shown  no  signs 
of  weakening,  although  there  are  persons 
who  predict  for  it  a  hard  future,  because  it 
has  got  into  a  rut.  Whatever  the  editor's 


intellect  may  prompt  his  thumb  to  do,  the 
thumb,  such  is  the  power  of  habit,  insists 
upon  going  straight  ahead  in  its  own  way. 
The  consequence  is,  the  old  gentleman, 
who  is  personally  one  of  the  most  delight 
ful  fellows  in  the  world,  and  a  man  of 
whom  Thaddeus  is  very  fond,  is  com 
pletely  ruled  by  that  recalcitrant  thumb. 
I  have  heard  it  said  that  it  is  some  other 
man's  thumb  rules  him;  but  Thaddeus 
denies  that.  He  says  there  is  no  power 
on  earth  that  could  move  his  editorial 
friend,  provided  his  conscience  is  once 
aroused,  and  that  the  old  gentleman,  once 
settled  in  his  mind  that  he  was  right, 
would  not  yield  to  all  the  thumbs  in  crea 
tion  backed  by  a  majority  of  the  fore  and 
little  fingers  of  all  mankind." 

"  Which  proves  that  he  is  a  man  of 
principle,"  said  Mr.  Whitechoker. 

"  He  is  ;  and  that  is  why  we  all  admire 
him,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  He  opposed  Thad 
deus  on  principle.  Thaddeus  was  a  Dem 
ocrat,  and  therefore  politically  was  not  to 
be  trusted.  The  old  gentleman  honestly 
believed  that,  and  lost  no  time  in  saying 
it.  His  shears  worked  day  and  night, 


cutting  Thaddeus's  party  into  bits,  and 
then  he'd  toss  the  bits  into  the  air  and 
blow  them  into  mere  nothingness — and 
he  really  did  effective  work.  Every  four 
or  five  days  he  would  pass  his  shears 
over  to  his  son  and  put  his  pen  into 
the  inkpot,  and  take  a  dab  at  Perkins 
in  a  way  that  gave  Perkins  the  most  un 
mixed  delight.  Perkins,  as  I  have  al 
ready  said,  had  no  political  record,  but 
he  had  been  more  or  less  outspoken  on 
the  subject  of  bummers  drawing  pen 
sions.  Some  time  before  his  nomination 
he  had  said,  in  a  letter  written  to  the 
Evening  Star,  that  the  party  which  was 
responsible  for  the  passage  of  laws  which 
gave  a  pension  to  every  man  who  lost 
his  breath  running  away  from  the  ene 
my  in  the  Rebellion  had  hauled  up  a 
piratical  pension  flag,  and  of  course  that 
was  the  old  gentleman's  cue.  He  wrote 
editorials  about  Old  Glory  that  would 
have  aroused  the  patriotism  of  a  clam, 
drawing  so  y-ivid  a  picture  of  Perkins's 
affiliations  with  rebel  brigadiers  that  the 
candidate  never  dared  venture  to  retire 
at  night  without  first  having  looked  under 


his  bed  to  see  if  there  was  not  a  seces 
sionist  concealed  there." 

"And  do  you  call  work  of  that  kind 
effective  ?"  asked  the  Bibliomaniac. 

"  It  was  indeed,"  said  the  Idiot.  "  You 
wouldn't  suppose  it  could  be,  but  in  pol 
itics  it  is.  The  minds  of  voters  are  easily 
swayed,  and  in  Phillipseburg  one  who 
could  even  suggest  that  a  man  was  not 
entitled  to  draw  a  pension  because  his 
eyes  were  weakened  by  reading  the  Cen 
tury's  war  papers  would  lose  the  Grand 
Army  vote  wholly,  nine -tenths  of  the 
votes  of  the  Sons  of  Veterans,  and  a  full 
two-thirds  of  the  votes  in  the  Loyal  Le 
gion  of  Grandsons  of  Veterans.  The  vet 
erans  are  a  very  sensitive  body  of  men  all 
through,  and  so  loyal  to  each  other  that, 
once  a  man  is  admitted  to  their  ranks, 
they  resent,  as  a  whole,  any  aspersions 
cast  upon  the  individual,  irrespective  of 
the  individual's  merit.  With  the  deserv 
ing  members  of  these  organizations  Per 
kins  was  in  fullest  sympathy,  but  he  could 
never  understand  why,  thirty  years  after 
the  war,  there  should  be  more  deserving 
survivors  of  that  dreadful  conflict  than 


77 


there  were  twenty  years  after  it.  In  fact, 
he  went  so  far  as  to  allude  to  the  De 
pendent  Pension  Law  as  an  Act  for  the 
Fostering  of  the  Veteran  Manufacturing 
Industry  (Unlimited),  and  publicly  ex 
pressed  his  surprise  that  our  pension  rolls 
do  not  include  the  names  of  any  of  the 
heroes  disabled  by  service  at  the  battle 
of  Bunker  Hill,  or  upon  the  occasion  of 
the  Boston  Tea  Party.  This  he  termed 
an  unjust  discrimination.  But  nobody 
but  cold,  heartless,  unpatriotic,  Jeff-Davis- 
loving  voters  sympathized  with  this  view, 
and  the  result  was  that  the  readers  of  the 
Evening  Star  came  to  look  upon  Thad- 
deus  as  a  Copperhead,  and  expressed  some 
wonder  that  he  did  not  carry  the  courage 
of  his  convictions  so  far  as  to  fly  the  Con 
federate  flag  from  the  roof  of  his  house, 
and  hire  a  German  band  to  play  Dixie  in 
front  of  it  for  eight  hours  a  day." 

"  What  influence  would  all  this  have 
on  a  man's  availability  for  the  Mayor 
alty  ?"  asked  the  Poet,  who  felt  a  little 
sore  over  the  defeat  of  a  brother  in 
rhyme. 

"  Much,"  said  the  Idiot.     "  In  the  first 


place,  according  to  the  Star,  the  South 
was  ready  to  spring  into  the  saddle  again 
the  minute  Perkins  was  elected.  You 
can  see  how  that  is.  The  Civil  War  isn't 
over  by  any  means.  Hostilities  have 
ceased  temporarily  only.  By  an  agree 
ment  between  the  North  and  the  South, 
Lee  surrendered ;  but  it  was  stipulated 
that  the  moment  Perkins  was  elected 
Mayor  of  Phillipseburg,  it  was  to  begin 
all  over  again." 

"Tutt,tutt!" cried  Mr.Pedagog.  "Don't 
be  foolish." 

"I'm  only  telling  you  the  impression 
the  venerable  editor  of  the  Evening  Star 
gave  his  readers.  I  don't  myself  believe 
that  General  Grant  was  a  party  to  any 
such  agreement ;  but  the  Star  led  every 
body  to  believe  that  he  was,  and  of  course 
all  the  patriots  voted  the  other  way,  and 
the  timid  souls,  fearing  the  carnage  of 
another  conflict,  flocked  into  the  opposi 
tion  camp  as  a  means  of  preserving  their 
lives  and  their  homes." 

"  Wasn't  there  any  fear  that  if  elected 
he  might  turn  the  city  over  to  the  Brit 
ish?"  laughed  the  Poet. 


79 


"Oh,  indeed,  yes,"  returned  the  Idiot. 
"  That  was  another  factor  in  the  defeat. 
Perkins,  according  to  common  report, 
had  a  special  aversion  to  all  things  Amer 
ican.  He  had  Persian  and  Turkish  rugs 
on  his  floors;  Bohemian  glass  on  his  ta 
ble  ;  French  pictures  on  his  walls ;  he 
wore  English  clothes,  imported  hats,  and, 
worst  of  all,  had  once  spoken  publicly  on 
the  importance  of  English  in  the  public 
schools.  His  love  of  imported  rugs  and 
glass  and  clothes  and  pictures  was  en 
tirely  due  to  his  hatred  of  American 
workingmen.  He  loved  to  see  working- 
men  starve.  If  he  had  been  asked  to  ex 
plain  the  difference  between  an  ingrain 
carpet  of  American  make  and  a  Persian 
rug  he  couldn't  have  done  it,  which 
proved  that  he  chose  the  latter  out  of 
pure  cussedness.  The  people  couldn't 
understand  why  he  preferred  to  drink 
out  of  a  goblet  of  Bohemian  pattern, 
which  if  carelessly  dropped  on  the  floor 
would  shiver  into  countless  atoms,  rather 
than  have  an  American  tumbler  at  less 
expense  that  could  be  thrown  down  three 
flights  of  stairs  on  to  a  marble  floor  with- 


out  even  cracking,  unless  that  preference 
were  due  to  an  unholy  desire  to  see  for 
eigners  thrive  and  his  fellow-countrymen 
falling  of  hunger.  The  workingmen  of 
Phillipseburg  were  made  to  believe  that 
the  election  of  Perkins  meant  the  entire 
cessation  of  labor  in  the  community ;  and 
as  many  of  them  were  told  so  by  their 
employers,  who  have  been  carrying  on 
their  respective  businesses  for  philan 
thropic  reasons  only  for  many  years,  they 
found  it  advisable  to  believe  it,  and  again 
Perkins  suffered." 

"  Well,  who  on  earth  did  vote  for  him, 
then  ?"  asked  Mrs.  Pedagog. 

"That's  one  of  the  mysteries  of  the 
whole  thing,"  returned  the  Idiot.  "  We 
haven't  really  been  able  to  find  out.  I 
think,  however,  that  Perkins  voted  for 
himself,  though  he  says  he  didn't.  Then 
his  rival,  who  was  a  very  delightful,  good 
fellow,  voted  for  him.  One  of  the  Old 
Jims  may  have  voted  for  him.  His  man 
ager  did.  A  great  many  of  his  friends 
did.  The  General  Committee  may  have, 
though  I  think  it  quite  likely  that  the 
other  side  got  them  by  a  small  majority; 


8r 


but  at  the  outside  I  can't  account  for 
more  than  two  hundred  of  Perkins's  votes. 
Where  the  other  twenty -five  hundred 
came  from  we  shall  never  know.  It  may 
be  that  the  inspectors  saw  double,  or  it 
may  be  they  got  tired  counting  the  other 
man's  ballots,  and  '  estimated '  the  final 
result  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  the  other 
man  the  victory  he  had  so  gallantly  won, 
and  at  the  same  time  spare  Perkins's 
feelings. 

"  At  any  rate,"  continued  the  Idiot, 
"some  people  voted  for  Perkins,  but  fort 
unately  not  enough  ;  and  on  Tuesday 
night,  after  an  exciting  day  travelling 
around  the  town  seeing  how  things  were 
looking,  Perkins  settled  down  at  home  to 
receive  the  returns.  At  eight  o'clock  he 
knew  what  had  happened,  and  when  he 
told  Mrs.  Perkins  she  shed  a  few  tears, 
but  they  were  tears  of  joy.  She  was  so 
glad  she  couldn't  help  it;  and  as  for  Per 
kins  himself,  he  breathed  a  deep  sigh  of 
relief  and  whispered  to  me, '  I  know  now 
how  a  prisoner  feels  who  expects  a  sen 
tence  of  two  years  and  gets  let  off  with 
thirty  days.' 


" '  Yes,  you  do,'  put  in  one  of  his  friends 
who  had  overheard  him  ;  '  but  you'll  be 
like  that  prisoner  in  another  respect.  It 
won't  be  long  before  you  are  in  it  again. 
A  life  of  crime  once  started  is  hard  to 
stop.  They'll  come  after  you  for  Con 
gress  next  fall/ 

"  '  Possibly,'  said  Thaddeus.  '  And  do 
you  know  what  I'll  do?' 

"'No,' said  I.     'What?' 

" '  I'll  ask  them  if  they  see  any  green, 
long  or  short,  in  my  eye ;  and  when  they 
answer  no,  I'll  tell  'em  that  I  don't  either. 
There  isn't  enough  there  or  in  my  pocket 
to  appeal  to  the  balance  of  power,  and 
until  there  is  the  only  thing  I'll  run  for  is 
the  9.05  train  in  the  morning.' 

"  And  with  that,"  said  the  Idiot/'  Thad 
deus  led  the  way  into  the  supper-room, 
where  we  ate  heartily  for  two  hours,  and 
washed  politics  out  of  remembrance  with 
stuffs  that  would  have  sent  the  Prohibi 
tion  party  into  hysterics." 

THE   END 


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